


Inner Circle

by lilylilym



Category: Winner (Band)
Genre: Angst and Feels, M/M, Post-Break Up, Winner, YG, namsong - Freeform, songhoon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-21
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-02-19 09:04:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 31,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2382680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilylilym/pseuds/lilylilym
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day, they all said to each other, "we gotta stop doing this". No questions asked, none answered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. PART I: Y O U T H

  
  
_Song Mino x Lee Seunghoon. Nam Taehyun x Song Mino_

**PART I**

**Y O U T H**

 

 

**1\. when it ends**

 

“We gotta stop doing this.” One day, Mino told Seunghoon. It was a late afternoon, the sun finally burned down the rest of the day in a hidden corner of the sky. Mino was sitting on Seunghoon’s bed, his back facing him, and Seunghoon could feel that the younger one just trembled a little as he raised his arms to put on his shirt.

“Thought you’d never said.” In the end, Seunghoon sighed. He wasn’t quite taken aback at what he heard, but he wasn’t exactly happy either. But isn’t that a fifty percent of every kind of relationship one could ever have with another human being, you either stay together, or you break apart. There is no need for further exploration, he guessed.

“What do you mean you thought I’d never said?” Mino turned around facing him. His voice sounded a little upset, only a little bit. Seunghoon knows Mino, this childish-but-tender kid, no matter how mad he is, he would never raise his voice with anyone. These two hold a total opposite images that they have on screen. Somebody, who was it, probably Tablo of Epik High, mentioned that their high and low rapping voices compliment each other well. On stage, Seunghoon always looks more passionate and lively, his light, cheerful and slightly childish tone combine perfectly with Mino’s laid back, masculine rapping style. Mino’s image on stage would always make people think Mino is the mature one, but he has always been the most gentle kid. Unlike him. “We also compliment each other well, don’t you think?” – Mino once said in one of those chances when both of them successfully sneaked out of the dorm, (Mino would have said he gotta bring something to his younger sister and Seunghoon’s mom, of course she paid a visit), and went to the old room that Seunghoon rented across from YG building. Mino said so, as he came up from behind Seunghoon who was standing at the balcony looking at their workplace, and placed a light kiss upon the back of his neck. The younger one wrapped his arms around Seunghoon, his head placed tightly on Seunghoon’s shoulder, and whispered, “I have been missing you.” Seunghoon probably didn’t say anything much, to _any_ of the boy’s tender words. The best he would ever do is a little “mm-hm,” and if Mino was upset about it, he would smile at the boy.

That much was enough.

“What do you mean you thought I’d never said?” Mino repeated again, his voice rushed and trembled a bit, his eyes piercing Seunghoon’s, and somewhere beyond that window, the sun breaks apart into darkness like a drop of ink slowly spreading in a glass of water.

“I probably didn’t mean much.” Seunghoon said as he turned around buttoning his shirt. “I guess things like this don’t generally last.”

“ _Things_ like _this,_ huh.” Mino scoffed and Seunghoon pretended that he didn’t hear a little pain in that dear voice. He decided not to say anything. Somehow he couldn’t get this button in.

“You’re not gonna ask me why I want us to stop doing this?” From the other side of the bed, Mino leaned towards him, his whole body laying on the messy blankets and pillows, head gently touching Seunghoon’s thigh. “Not even one question?”

“Does it matter?” Seunghoon replied, not turning back. The spot in his right thigh where Mino’s head almost laid on felt hot, yet he didn’t move. He avoided looking down, but he knew Mino was looking straight up at him, his sharp eyebrows slightly lowered and lips forcing a smile. Mino always looked terribly awkward when he tried to fake a smile, Seunghoon thought. His face was too honest and his eyebrows never lied. Unlike him.

Seunghoon finished buttoning his shirt after struggling to get the buttons right. He took almost fifteen minutes. Mino probably knew he wasn’t really in his right mind. Mino probably knew. Or not. In the end, how much did Seunghoon actually tell Mino in any circumstances, except for those few “mm-hm” and smiles? Perhaps Mino knew, perhaps he didn’t. In the end, that was the last sentence said between them in that dark room across YG building where they spent stolen moments kissing until breathless. Seunghoon didn’t remember what happened afterwards, much less how his question was answered.

But does it really matter?

 

 

* * *

 

**2\. that summer**

 

It was a chilling autumn morning, back then when they were still boys, so eagerly facing the world and anticipating anything coming across their way. He just turned twenty and Seunghoon twenty one, coming out of a brutal competition where they bitterly won against their own brothers. Their dreams were young, bright, and big, and the stages seem like heaven, they would smell the air every single time they got to perform in a big stage. The bright light and heart-thumping music mesmerize them. Too innocent, too young, fallen in mad love with life, laughters and tears coming without warning, they absorbed everything around them with the curiosity of a ten year old leaving his home to a school trip for the first time.

It was the first trip abroad that they took, and while secretly holding hands waiting in line at the airport, they decided to run away for a day, faraway from their teammates just so that the little _thing_ between them, back then, it was still a _thing_ , wouldn’t get too out of hand. Until now, Mino still remembers how they pulled a prank in front of other guys, Seunghoon acting like he was tricked into the trip to Kawagoe and everyone else was laughing so hard it was easy for Mino to play along. Seunghoon was always an amazing actor, Mino thinks, you never know what he really thinks. _He_ never knew what Seunghoon really thinks. That night, when Jinwoo fell asleep and kept snoring loudly into his ear, Mino laid on his side facing Seunghoon, his arm reaching to the other bed and soon enough his fingers met with Seunghoon’s warm palm, as they silently hold each other’s hand tightly without even saying a word.

On that chilling autumn morning, he woke up at eight in the morning (he almost never does that voluntarily, even until now) because of the excitement, who cares if some cameramen actually followed them. They ran to the closest train station nearby, Seunghoon with his broken Japanese tried to figure out how to get to Kawagoe, and Mino remembered telling a very confused Seunghoon that knowing how to ask questions in Japanese is one thing, but if they didn’t understand the answers then what’s the point? They both looked at each other stupidly, but then for them, sitting next to each other in that train for more than two hours, was more than enough. They got one day traveling together, all by themselves, to a strange city in a strange country. Isn’t it exciting?

Traveling in a foreign city without knowing the language, feeling like time has stopped and the whole world is anew, things like that got boring after the second time you tried. The third time, it became _unbearable_. Mino hates flying to a new place carrying the same old mentality in his head and emotions in his heart like some heavy luggages he cannot leave behind. But he does, every single time. He always does. From then on, waiting in line at the airport makes his hand cold and he refuses to look back at Seunghoon, who is probably standing by himself listening to music, or joking with Jinwoo hyung who constantly touches him mindlessly. Mino would put his hands inside his pockets and he tells himself to get it together. The empty spot next to him becomes this much spacious and he doesn't let anyone fill that spot, not even Taehyun, the pretty one who has laid next to him on his empty bed many nights but only managed to stay until half past-twelve. That's when alcohol runs cold and shame crawls back into the vein under his skin, and he would then, gently for the first few times, tell Taehyun to get lost. But it gradually became a habit. Taehyun would never show up at his room if he didn't have at least a few drinks, and he never waits until midnight anymore. By the time Mino opens his eyes, he will be by himself again. The pretty boy would even make the bed on his side before leaving, it was almost like a nonchalant "fuck you" on Mino's face but he's okay with that. He doesn't take it personal. Taehyun doesn't take it personal. This kind of thing shouldn't be taken personal.

The only thing is that, the emptiness that he feels every time it was announced that they will be flying elsewhere to promote keeps getting bigger, and he never found himself traveling by train anywhere again. Not when his last memory of traveling by train always traces back to that chilling autumn morning, when Seunghoon, twenty one year old, laughed at everything he said as they took turn cracking jokes and laughing during the whole trip until their stomachs hurt.

Mino would repeat this memory too many times a day and smile at those ingenuous moments when things were simple and they were young. But every time, he is not sure if his mind alters those events and molds them to fit with the future he already knows. Suddenly Seunghoon's face wasn't as bright as he remembered, and that moment when they were the only ones at that train station who walked the opposite way and hyung said to him, "like salmon going the other way, just us two," he swears what Seunghoon really meant was that they chose the hard way and for that they would pay. Hyung-ah, sometimes Mino calls silently inside his head, salmons swim upstream to find a spot to lay their eggs and die, they achieved what they fight for. Us two, what did we even have but stolen kisses and a brief good bye. Where did you go, he'd mumble, the cheerful one, the boy he fell in love with, where did they all go, the silent hugs, the hand holdings, when did it go, the time when just merely being in the same room with each other means high flow of andrenaline and the sound of their heartbeats so loud it mutes everything else.

Mino’s mind keeps replaying each moment till he forgot how much Seunghoon, or himself even, would have changed during all those years, until that day when he slipped his tongue and said, "We gotta stop doing this".

And Seunghoon agreed.

 

 

* * *

 

 

**3\. i know**

 

Taehyun wasn’t always like this. He used to not be bothered by the way Mino tries so hard to crack a joke when they are on stage. It _was_ cute, he thinks, until that day when Mino came back in the middle of the night, slammed his door _slightly_ harder than usual and stayed silently in the dark without turning his lights on. Taehyun went outside to check on Mino. He stood in front of Mino’s room for a good fifteen minutes and couldn’t hear any noises, except that he knew Mino hadn’t fallen asleep. He just knew. Perhaps because ten minutes later, Seunghoon got home and quietly greeted him then walked straight into the rest room. Taehyun never thought he was the observant kind, but for some reasons, he _knew._

When he returned to his bed, he couldn’t fall asleep. Something has formed and something has changed inside him, but he couldn’t quite grasp what it was. Nam Taehyun, the indifferent one, who wouldn’t do so much as ask his teammates what was going on. In the end, it was none of his business. But somehow, that business keeps bothering him, as Seunghoon became even more silent than usual after the shows, and Mino would drink a few drinks too many during dinner then make a mess out of the shared toilet.

It only started as a few pats on the back everytime Mino would throw up in the toilet in a strange bar where the two of them conveniently went to when they have a relaxed schedule. Then it became him dragging Mino out of the the club and hurriedly catching a random cab that would charge them 20,000 won more because the guy Mino picked a fight with threw something at the tail as they left. Then at one point, Taehyun stopped Mino from going to bars. He brought alcohol to his room instead, and by half past eight they would get totally shitfaced. Mino would rap nonsensically while Taehyun plays some sorts of instrument and sings back up. They must have fallen asleep at ten. When Mino woke him up at ten past twelve, his head hurt so bad he mumbled, “hyung let me sleep.” Only a few minutes later, he would hear Mino’s low voice whispering to his ears again, “Hyunie, can you go back to your room, I’m not used to sharing my bed.” Such a liar. Taehyun was still drunk but somehow he immediately responded in his head. But he got up anyway, walked out of the door, tried not to look back at the half-naked Mino who was sitting in a corner of his bed, burying his face in his hands. He _knew_ why he was getting kicked out of the bed. He knew, because as he walked past Seunghoon’s room, he saw his hyung sitting on his chair and looking through the crack of the door straight at him. He pretended that didn’t bother him at all.

One day he would find himself waking up naked next to Mino who was still sleeping. It was ten to twelve, unconsciously he would get up, put on his clothes, straighten up his side of the bed, and left. Everything then started to bother him.

Jinwoo hyung once said to him casually, “Taehyunie, I know it’s not my business, but ain’t we too old to get involved in rebound shit?” He smiled at his hyung, acted as if he didn’t understand what was being talked about. It wasn’t rebound, Taehyun bitterly thought. Mino probably didn’t even know what was going on between them. That was alcohol talking, kissing, and touching. Taehyun was amazed at how much that thought troubled him. But him being Nam Taehyun, all he ever did was to get out of Mino’s way (when he was sober, of course) and observe him from afar. Mino, surprisingly, still cracked jokes at him, asked to join him at gallery openings, and went shopping with him. As if those eyes full of shame that once told him to get the hell out of his bed were his own imagination.

It bothered him so much that one day, Taehyun stopped Mino right when their drunken lips were about to touch:

“Hyung, we gotta stop doing this.”

In this life, Taehyun would never forget how painful one’s eyes can look.

****  


**./.**


	2. PART II: HEART-A-MESS

**PART II**

**HEART-A-MESS**

**4\. the broken clock**

 

  
Hello, my name is Lee Seung Hoon. I turned twenty one the other day.

“You’re twenty one? Oh that can’t be.” Some interviewers said, they genuinely looked surprised. “For the fourth time,” I said with a smile, then everyone in the room bursted out laughing. People are really simple, they love those tiny little wits. They never expect anyone to be smart. A fifth grade level humor would excite them, yet they would react as if it was the most intelligent thing they’ve ever heard. I received applauses from the audiences, bowed humbly, then went on with another joke.

“WINNER has been a hot issue for the past two years. What changed for you, Lee Seung Hoon – ssi?” Questions like this got asked a lot. It’s funny that reporters, reviewers, MCs and the general audiences always ask the same questions yet they expect different answers. To prove that idols got brains too. What changed for me? Let me see. Everything? I got tired of my everyday life. Music to me nowadays is like a cheating first lover, you love deeply and regretfully yet you hate them so much. My dreams were achieved and that got me question why they are my dreams in the first placae. I yearned for being loved and yet love I lost. I feel lonely in a crowd, lonely amongst my brothers. Most of all, I feel lonely when I looked at that boy I once had. Of course, those wouldn’t be what should be my answers.

“I really wish anything would change, [insert the interviewer’s name]-ssi.” I made a face. Wait for thirty seconds so that people start giggling. Now punch line. “Especially the dorm.” People were a little confused. That was a generic answer. I breathed in and looked straight at the camera. “YG seonsaengnim I beg of you. We have made a lot of money for the past two years can we at least get rid of those bunk beds now?” Now this is fifth grader’s level. People started laughing like crazy, even the members. Mino only smirked at my remark. I lied again for the sake of entertainment.

“You guys sleep on bunk beds, are you serious?” That MC, whoever he was, asked another question. I smiled, “of course not.” People laughed again. Once you made them laugh and injected the image of yourself as a humorous person in public imagination, it stayed. “Then why did you say so?” – “I was making a joke,” I replied.

“Seriously?” He laughed.

“This is [insert the name of any variety programs designed to entertain general audiences at night after 9pm], what do you expect?” I responded with a dramatic expression. “On that note, I actually ran out of jokes lately.” Tips: make fun of yourself and look sincere doing so is the best joke of all. People are too insecure, they love anyone who has no problem laughing at oneself. Everyone in the room exploded with laughters. I kept my facial expression and looked around, couldn’t help but noticing that Mino didn’t even twitch his lips for one bit. I withdrew my smile.

That twenty-one-year-old joke got old fast, and the last time I was pulling it, a female MC asked me, “You always said you are twenty-one for the third, fourth, or fifth time. Why twenty-one?” She might be a fan, I thought. Generally people would assume that was how old I was when we debuted, and to be honest, they don’t really care. Nobody would ask a question to follow up real informations from a joke.

“It’s 2-N-E-1.” Suddenly Mino answered the question, and I was taken aback. That was good, I thought. I didn’t even think of that. As a matter of fact, I didn’t really have an answer, and my fifth grade level of humor didn’t allow for such seriousness. “Ah, yes. At YG we make sure we advertise for our artists always.” That was such a bad joke. I thought as I continued. I should have let the MC come to the conclusion by herself. But looking at her uneasy eyes, I know she didn’t like this joke one bit. Oh, I thought, love, _so did I_.

\- - -

“That was great! Thank you everyone.” Kang Seungyoon patted on our backs, Mino and I, as he cheerfully mentioned how well the interview went. “I was surprised at that question, Hoonie no one ever asked a question like that did they?”

“Yeah I didn’t anticipated that.” I replied while putting his hand on my shoulders away.

“Mino came up with a great response. Did you guys plan that ahead?” Clueless Seungyoon asked another question and I avoided looking at Mino. “Yeah kind of. It was his idea.” I didn’t even look but I was sure Mino was smirking again. I lied, not for the sake of entertainment this time.

“I’m glad you hyungs are working together so well.” Seungyoon grinned. “Mm,” I mumbled, then rather awkwardly walked back to my room, bumping into Taehyun who was standing next to the water stand. Our eyes met, but he quickly retreated. “Mi ahn hae,” I heard his soft voice. Not responding, I kept on going. I could feel him staring at me until I closed the door. After a few minutes, I heard some footsteps and Jinwoo’s voice getting louder outside.

“Knock knock.” He said while knocking at my door.

“Who’s there?” I replied with an almost cheerful voice while opening the door.

“Not-your-lover.” He lowered his voice while grinning. “What the hell.” I muttered, but stepped aside anyway so Jinwoo could come in. “Hyung you really need to not do this now.”

“Dude, talking about not doing things. You need to get yourself together.” Jinwoo nonchalantly sit on my bed and point next to him. “Go sit here, I brought you some beers.”

“Hyung you know I don’t drink.” I joined him but shaking my head, refusing his offer.

“You think I do?” He opened one bottle. “But you look like you need at least three shots. Come, for the sake of the twenty one year old man, drink your shit away.” I reluctantly take the bottle he was holding out.

“We really shouldn’t do this.”

“Eh, we’re the hyungs, we just can’t let the babies have all the fun.” He insisted while sipping from his bottle. “Eck this is really nasty.”

“Where are they?” I sipped my beer mindlessly. “You’re right, I prefer coke.”

“Seungyoon went out with some of his friends.” He paused and looked at me, “You don’t mean to ask about the other two right?”

“Eh.” I tried not to look at Jinwoo and kept on drinking. It wasn’t too bad after you got used to the taste. Jinwoo kept looking at me intensely, but I decided not to say anything. Finally, he sighed:

“You kids really need to get this shit over with. How long are you gonna keep things like this?”

I returned his gaze with a I-don’t-know-what-you-are-talking-about expression on my face, and Jinwoo called it out.

“Cut the crap, alright? You and Taehyun and Mino. Can you guys not do this?”

Jinwoo looked genuinely worried. He was always a nice boy, sensitive, caring and all. I scoffed, “I didn’t do anything.”

“The problem is you didn’t do anything.” He said, a bit angrily. “You think we’re fools, don’t you?” He stopped a second then went on. “Well, Seungyoonie is a little bit of a fool, and I look the part. But I ain’t. You know I ain’t.”

“Yeah you ain’t.” I looked down at my beer. My feet started to tap on the floor unconsciously. “The thing is, hyung, I can’t do anything.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s the one who left me.” After a long pause, I muttered. Jinwoo gave me his most concerned eyes yet, and I shook my head. "Hyungah, don't do that. Don't give me that look."

"Seunghoonie you gotta see your face." He sighed, then extended his arms to pull me closer. "Bae, come 'ere. You little thing." I scoffed while enjoying being held in his tiny arms. "Dude, you're so manly now it's kind of gross." Jinwoo started giggling and hugged me tighter.

"You always made fun of everything. Did you also do that when Mino ended things with you?"

“I kinda did. Lost love always tastes like a bad joke.” Jinwoo shrugged. “Word,” he said. “But anyhow, these two boys are probably drinking and screwing next door, so I don’t know about your cause, but if I were you I’d like to entangle that shit.”

“Jinwoo you’re really gross. It’s manly.” I joked again and he laughed.

“Seunghoonie you sick bastard. I’m just saying though, do what you feel like doing.” Jinwoo concluded and tried to get up. He gave me a peek on my cheek before leaving, and this time I didn’t try to avoid it. (“Dude you really are queer nowadays, you used to avoid this at all cost!” - “Dude you’re the one who kissed me!” - “Oh I’m definitely queer, the world knows it.” Jinwoo cheekily said and left.)

Left behind in my room, I tried not to think about what Jinwoo just said, Mino and Taehyun getting drunk and screwing each other in his room. It’s funny, I thought, we never did anything like that in our apartment, let alone in Mino’s own bed. We didn’t want anyone to notice, so we would make up excuses to get out of the dorm, usually thirty minutes apart, and came up to my old room near the offices. We always met there. We could only meet there.

The first time I left a note in Mino’s pocket saying I am going out for a walk, it took him almost an hour to arrive. On that day, I had put a stop to every other alternative scenarios that could happen to both of us if we have had kept on pretending that we did not know the other’s thoughts. We could have been good brothers, _great_ brothers even. We could have hung out all night, getting trashed and talking mad shit about our ladies problems. But instead, I put a suggestive note in his pocket after whispering in his ears as I walked out, with my voice much lower and slowlier than usual, _that I am going and might not be home for a while_ , so he could finish off the sentence, _join me if you care_. I couldn’t say that I was relieved when finally I saw his figure walking from afar, wanderingly lost. I knew he would come. I was just not sure how long it would take him to follow my steps. It took him almost an hour.

And there we were. He stopped in front of me, hands in his pockets, his feet anxiously tapping on the pavement. “I got your note,” he mumbled, “have you been here long?”

“Not quite.” I said. “Glad you came out.”

“I went to get a pack of cigarettes,” Mino quickly explained. “I…” He was gonna say something but left the sentence unfinished when he saw my eyes. “Never mind.” (Later on he told me that he wasn’t even a smoker, but he got one anyway because he thought nicotine would clear his mind. _It didn’t._ )

When the conversation couldn’t get more awkward than that, Mino looked up at the stair and tilt his head towards my room. Two boys in their early twenties, who devoted too much time training and chasing dreams to have ever been involved in anything romantic, reluctantly looked at each other in front of the building stair as if they knew once they walked up that stair, something is gonna change forever. And it did. The usual brotherly hugs and its lingering warmth on our skin and accidental eye contacts that would last longer than a few heartbeats became too much of a burden as I led the way. When we finally got in front of my apartment, I just couldn’t bring myself to do a thing, until Mino wrapped me in his arms from behind, his cold nose burying into my neck and his messy hair brushing on my cheek. His overwhelmingly hot breath touched my skin as Mino whispered, “Can you open that _damn_ door already?”

Now thinking back, everything suddenly became so faraway, as if reality has turned into the door in my old apartment which has been locked since, all I can do is to peek through the crack to look at the past. And the past almost became somebody else’s, because I couldn’t remember what it felt like to have his hand running across my body, his warmth breath on my neck, I didn’t even know what kisses used to taste like. All I could remember, perhaps, was the throbbing pain every time I saw his broad shoulders from behind, the curve of his back, and his hands. Those hands that I let go, on that last evening when he told me, “we gotta stop doing this”.

How long ago was it again, since that day? One year? A year and a half? I lost counts of the days, busy schedules and daily shows kept you from mourning your lost cause. But I might have created a Mino for myself, freezing him in the past, like a dead clock hanging on the wall of an abandoned house; perhaps Mino was nothing like I remembered and everything I had about him was but an illusion of longing, a prayer that our story didn’t just end there - on that day, when the sun burned a black hole in the sky and everything started to fall apart. The tender kid that used to wrap his arms around me from behind and kissed the back of my neck while whispering he missed me even though we saw each other everyday, now got drunk almost every other night, screwed his teammate in his own room with us around, and kicked him out in the middle of the night. He was nothing like the boy I had.

_Hello, my name is Lee Seunghoon. I just turned twenty one the other day. That’s when I first fell in love._

_It has been four years since._

./.


	3. reckless forgetting

**PART II**

**HEART-A-MESS**

**5\. reckless forgetting**

 

Being an underground rapper for quite a while, bars and pubs didn’t actually faze me. I was quite a drinker too, back in the day before signing up to be one of those faces printed in magazines for teenagers and advertisements for school uniforms.  If anyone has asked me, do I actually want to be an idol, it would take me more then a moment of reluctancy to say yes. It is true, music is my life. I want to express myself through music, but in this industry, being able to do music usually comes with a price. I used to be able to just write whatever I want, mix some beats, make a demo, create some mixtapes, and rap my heart out in those dark bars where poor kids like me hang around sharing drinks and cigarettes. When I was a kid, things were much easier. I didn’t have to think about money or future. All I did was burning the days away in my room recording with my friends and performing with a bigger group of friends, or once in a while, bigger groups of audience. I was a fish in a small pond, comfortable in my own skin, being able to do everything I love. But then I tried to swim to the river, and somehow ended up in the ocean. Now every single scale on my skin has to flare out all the time to protect myself.  
  
  
I was Hugeboy Mino. I cursed and drank. I didn’t hang out with your boys next door or your school basketball team players. I didn’t have a dream – I goddamn lived it. At least until I was convinced that my life was unsustainable and that if I wanted to go further I would have to leave the underground scenes to debut somehow. To a teenage boy, at that time, when you think that you’re such a badass and so unique, this thought upset me more than anything else. Only sellouts do it. How can you leave your brothers behind to register for a life that is not your own just so that you can make money? Money is nothing, brotherhood and dreams are everything. I guess all the kids in my block thought the same way. As a matter of fact, all the kids at one point must have had this thought. We all think we are different, we all think the same.  
  
  
In my life, I guess there were so many turning points. The mountains of effort I put on in order to walk away from debuting the first time, the despair I had when struggling with a ballad band that wasn’t going to make it, and the overwhelming shame of being a trainee all over again, competing with the boys much younger than I was to debut in an idol band. I was desperate as I went through those, but it all made sense. Life happened the way it was supposed to be. I used to think that if I work really, really hard, something is bound to happen, I should be able to get what I want. Guess what, life isn’t a series of causes and effects. As a matter of fact, you can work your damn ass off and all you can get is sands in your eyes. That’s how the world works, simultaneously, spontaneously, sometimes magically. Great people suffer to death. Assholes run the nations. Dreams are crushed, love is conquered. But once in those millions moments, in one of many seconds you would spend, when you least expected, you would encounter something enchanted, something that you would never imagine, and because you never think of it, it becomes that much surreal.  
  
  
 _Seunghoon. It gotta be him._  
  
  
That was what I usually thought about when I was getting trashed at a strange bar far away from our boarding home. I always started with my existential crisis of who I am, who I was and who I used to be, and by the third drink, I would spit an impromptu rap while nodding my head along the beat of some cheap electro music, something about the cruelty and unforgiving nature of life. By the fifth drink, a wave of memories would come and drown me to the bottom of my glass, and I commiserated by ordering three more fireball shots. My whole existence would then turn into something extra-terrestrial as stars came up from nowhere and started dancing around me. Then someone would bump into me and I, with my drunken voice, much lower than usual, and my mixed up pronouciations, would ask them if they “really want to fucking die,” and by that I meant, “you should pay more attention to where you were going”. One fight or two could happen, though rarely, because at that point, we were all drunkards. Oh, the stories you would tell after a night out in Gangnam.  
  
  
“You shouldn’t drink too much like that.” Seunghoon would tell me whenever I drank a few drinks too many and started cracking silly jokes.  
  
  
“I’m not that drunk, hyung.” I would grin, finishing up another shot while Seunghoon rolled his eyes. He scoffed, “yeah right. Kiddo, you cried.”  
  
  
“No I did not.” I said, trying really hard to wipe the tears on my face. Why do I have tears on my face? I wasn’t hurt or anything. I didn’t even feel sad. Next to me, Seunghoon sat quietyly, hands in his pocket. I wanted to hold his hand, but he wouldn’t let me. “We’re in public,” he said, “could be uneccesarily reckless.” I shrugged in protest, “we held hands in public before.” He didn’t say anything, and I could see the uneasiness in his eyes. Seunghoon didn’t want to be here. He wasn’t used to seeing me like this. Hyung, you  _made_  me like this, I thought as my hand found its way into Seunghoon’s pocket. Seunghoon didn’t try to resist, but he looked away. My fingers filled the empty space between his, those tiny, tiny, cold fingers that wouldn’t stop clenching mine tightly. We would sat there, silently, I kept drinking and Seunghoon absentmindedly looked around, his eyes fixed at some uncertain points. 

 

 

* * *

  
  
We used to go to bars together like that when we were sick of the tiny room across YG building. The first few months, it was great. Until, you know, it wasn’t. The first time we met there, I basically shoved him through the door and cornered him at one of those walls, his eyes refused to look up until I  _made_  him and we kissed in the dark. My mouth was dry, so was his. I ran my thumb finger across his lips and he let out a small laugh that made me feel stupid, we _were_  stupid, because we didn’t really know what we were doing. We just learned to bury ourselves in eachother. Seunghoon’s neck would be bruised with all the hickeys that I only knew how to make due to those soft porns that we sometimes watched back then when we still pretended to like girls. I guess we did, those soft porns did arouse me, but nothing like how Seunghoon would. It was some kinds of excitement that I never seemed to figure out, the reluctance and awkwardness, the fear and the lust, all combined into a twist in my lower stomach. I didn’t know those feelings before, not until Seunghoon slipped a note into my pocket and I smoked almost a whole pack of cigarettes hurriedly bought in a convenient store before I decided to follow him. Like a kid, I was scared to touch him. And I knew he felt so, the way his tender skin trembled under my touch, and his gaze fixed at me when I trailed my kiss across his chest to his stomach. We kissed in utter silence, didn’t dare to even breathe loudly as if the heat from our body would burn us alive if either of us let out a sound. Our kisses tasted like loss, and our eyes looked like we would deeply, deeply regretted this instance. But funny, neither of us stopped.   
  
  
“It was our unbalanced hormone,” Seunghoon told me then, “we’re a bunch of horny guys in their late 19s being trapped together”. I was slightly upset at his remarks which well turned into anger when he looked at me with those concerned eyes, “are we still friends, Mino? Will you still be my friend?” There was that sharp pain in my chest that he caused me since the very beginning of  _us_ , and until the very end, I guess it never went anywhere.   
  
  
“I could have easily hook up with someone else, you know.” I pretended to smirk, and he just motioned his hand to dismiss. “Like who? Taehyun?”  
  
  
“And the likes.” Seunghoon laughed. “You don’t mean that.”  
  
  
“I could have. Our maknae definitely has a crush on me.” I protested. It was a total lie and I knew that, but Seunghoon didn’t.  
  
  
“Who doesn’t have a crush on you?” Seunghoon laughed again, and I couldn’t hold in the desire to just grab him into another clumsy kiss. “Ya, that’s my nose.” Seunghoon yelled at me, still laughing. “Dude don’t be going around flirting with our maknae when you’re such a bad kisser. Nam-goon won’t tolerate that.”  
  
  
“I don’t need him to.” I laughed along and pulled him closer. Seunghoon laid on my arm, facing me. Our noses were so close they almost touched. We would spend so much time laying still like that in a loss for words. Perhaps it was akward for us. I didn’t know what to say, this scenario was strange for us. I didn’t know if it was love, but wasn’t love such a grand thing that language itself was exhausted of possibility to transfer the meaning. The only thing I knew was since then, my eyes never stopped searching for him in a crowd, my hands became itching to touch him if he was in sight, and subconsciously I would hug him from the back whenever he was in front of me, only to be startled a second or two later. But how could I not, once you have felt the fragile line of his neck, his small back fitted perfectly in your arms, the lingering fragance behind his ears; if the charismatic Seunghoon with his lively voice and honest laugh would only show his tenderness to you, you would be a fool not to be mesmerized by it. I wasn’t a fool, I thought. Yet I was a fool in so many different ways.   
  
  
Have you ever been so unsure about yourself because the person whose world yours collided with made you feel small? I was Hugeboy Mino, and yet all I could feel in front of Seunghoon was being small. He was Lee Seunghoon, a boy who loved dancing and walked his way to fame by his mere efforts. He wasn’t that cool guy in a bar, dropping beat and rapping like crazy, with his crews and supportive audiences who screamed his name. Seunghoon was that child dancing on the street, impressive if he was in middle school, but that type of image would start to lose credibility the older he became. By the age seventeen, if you are still a dancing boy on the street, hanging out with other boys, you would seem like a nuisance no less. No singing lessons, no exposure to underground hip hop, the fact that he was here with me, sharing the same path, made me feel like most of my life was a big joke and that I was a big whiny baby.   
  
  
Silently working, enduring pains and hardships, only showing you the most brilliant products, that was Seunghoon. The type that would make you fall,  _deeply_ , for, only to feel even more lonely because him you’d never be able to get.  
  
  
Sadly, I only came to understand this fact after I was so far in. 

 

 

 

* * *

  
  
“Hey, let’s go back home, you are drunk.” Seunghoon would try to pull me up from the table. “Get a hold of yourself, you hear me?” I pulled my arm back and slightly pushed him.  
  
  
“I’m not drunk.”  
  
  
“Jesus, you were rapping and crying.” His voice sounded half worried and annoyed. “No I didn’t,” I said, trying to get up, only to fell on the man next to me. “Jezzz,” I could hear him mumbling to himself. “What a burdensome person.”  
  
  
“I could hear you, you know.” I grinned while pulling my arms around his waist and tightening my grips. He startled at my movement but to my surprise, he didn’t try to break off.  
  
  
“Were you always like this? Geez.” He sighed again, but slowed down to match my footsteps.  
  
  
We walked through the dark alleys, just like the old days when we used to sneak out of the dorms, trying to avoid the security cameras by hiding in blind spots. Seunghoon was never good at it, but I was an expert. Somehow, today, shitfaced as I was, he became the one who led me through the sea of cameras. At one of the corners in the walking stair leading to our boarding home, I pushed Seunghoon against the wall and kissed him. His whole body froze for a moment, then his hands reluctantly grabbed the back of my shirt as I went in deeper. I could hear his breath starting to shorten, his fingers reaching to my shoulder as he tried to break contact. “Let’s go,” he said briefly without looking at me and hand in hand, we climbed back to our apartment two floors away.   
  
  
I automatically let go of his hand the moment we walked through the door. That was our deal. Seunghoon  _hated_  being caught by the members, and even though I was sure no one paid attention, he obsessed with the idea. We were close anyway, but that extra intimacy, Seunghoon said, he couldn't afford. So I let his hand go and walked straight to my room, without even saying good night. I lost it at that point and just needed my bed, so I just went ahead.  
  
  
“Goodnight, hyung.” Outside my door, Seunghoon said something like that.  
  
  
I didn’t realize then.   
  
  
./.


	4. it wasn't me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Namsong. Warning: Language.

**PART II**

**HEART-A-MESS**

**6\. it wasn't me**

 

 

"Baby, your heart is a mess."

 

Jinwoo's random comment at the breakfast table got me startled. I stopped eating and looked at him, "hyung did you stalk my BEAT account again?" From the other side of the table, the deer-eyed man smiled at me, "no? You haven't been on BEAT for like a year."

 

"That's what I'm saying. That song is so last season." I turned back to my plate and started tweaking the scrambled eggs.

 

"Doesn't mean it's not relevant." He nonchalantly poured orange juice into a big glass.

 

"Mm." I stuffed a big piece of toast in my mouth, pretended to be busy. "You should have some breakfast, we have a tight schedule today." Jinwoo laughed at me trying to chew and talk at the same time. "I couldn't believe no one's here to witness this. And they said I'm the messy one." He said.

 

"Well, like you said," I finished my meal with a big gulp of milk, "Apparently I'm a mess."

 

Before Jinwoo could eagerly come up with one of his nonsensical responses, another cheerful voice entered the room:

 

"Who is?"

 

I awkwardly turned away at once, but didn't make it in time. Mino walked widely across the room and made it to the table before I could safely leave. With a big grin on his face, he greeted me:

 

"Hyunie anyong~ what do we have for breakfast?"

 

I smiled at the table, avoiding his gaze.

 

"I had some scrambled eggs with french toast and milk..."

 

"Dude don't be one of those straight frat boys getting up late expecting your date to prepare breakfast." Out of nowhere, Jinwoo dropped a comment. "Aint nobody here yo' mama." I was shocked hearing it, but Mino seemed to only be at ease. He teased Jinwoo back:

 

"Yo I'm a bad boy ya'll know it. Bad boy don't cook their own breakfast."

 

"Oh the bad boy will go without breakfast juseyo." Jinwoo replied right away, and they both laughed at their stupid jokes. I took the chance to leave the kitchen after rushly excusing myself.

 

"Hyunie breakfast juseyo!!" Behind, Mino's whiny voice along with Jinwoo's laughter followed me all the way to my door. In the hall, a very pissed off half-naked morning-Seungyoon greeted me while confusedly walking to the bathroom as Seunghoon passed through me to get to the kitchen. He slightly nodded at me without even looking as I cleared the way. “You went home late last night,” he said in a low voice, almost like a whisper that got me astounded. “Ah, yes,” I quickly responded, “Mino hyung and I… we went out for a drink.” I felt as though I shouldn’t have mentioned that. It was not like I didn’t _know_ what’s up with him and Mino. But it wasn’t like he knows that I knew.

 

“Is that so?” Seunghoon mumbled as he continued walking towards the kitchen as if the conversation never happened. Which irritated me a bit, to be honest. I shouldn’t have to be the one getting involved in the mess they created. Whatever that was. Screw this, I thought as I went back to my room and started looking for my outfit for today. In my closet, my dirty clothes from last night were rolled up and hastily pushed into a corner; just looking at them made my cheeks hot and I could feel something ran up my spines. Almost like anger.

 

Last night, Mino pushed me against the wall and kissed me. Oh yeah he did. And it came out of nowhere. At first, when he drunk-texted me to come join him at the bar, it was already 10:30, and I didn’t want to go. Let’s be real, if he wanted to have a drink with me, he could have asked me to join him in the first place. I don’t want to be those second options in a contact list that one can freaking text in the middle of the night just because they got lonely. I was at home, doing my own thing (which was half-listening to music, half-surfing the internet and totally looking out at the door every 5 minutes to see if Mino came home) and perfectly contented at that, but the fucker got to text me. Worse, it was one word. “Yo.”

 

Five minutes of internal debate in, I gave up and texted back.

 

“What up.”

 

And I regretted doing so right away, because after 10 minutes, the text wasn’t even shown as “read”. The thought that Mino might have falsely texted me triggered some kinds of fear, and I laughed at my pathetic self after spending another 10 minutes intensely looking at the phone screen, swiping it constantly to keep it active. “Oooookay,” I told myself, “that was stupid.” I decided to stop making a fool out of myself, even in private, because someone upthere probably was surveilling human race and if so, I didn’t want to have to make up excuses the day I finally went to heaven. Imagine, name - _Nam Tae Hyun_ , cause of death - _old age_ , question - _why on the day of xx in the year of 201x did you spent half an hour waiting for an asshole’s text which probably wasn’t meant for you_? They probably would send me to hell if that question was posed because good freaking question, _why_? I mocked myself as I went to the remove my make up and wash my face. Oh, did I tell you that I still had my make up on after the show and I was going to wash it off right before Mino’s text and because of that I decided not to? I cursed at myself ruthlessly with the most anti-feminist words that I could find, _Namtae you’re such a girl, a bad one at that, dude you’re such a sissy, with your freaking make up on expecting a half-ass date, women ain’t even as pathetic as you are_ , etc. I can keep going, but those words were really bad and I hope anyone, even when they hate themselves the most, wouldn’t repeat those. Women are not some type of low-standard you compare yourself to when (you think) you’re at your worst. To be real though, I looked damn fine with eyeliner and foundation and mad contour. The rest was the make up artist’s secrets.

 

I put on some night cream and lotions, changed into my PJ and decided to go to bed. Screw all the way up to heaven, Mino, I thought as I picked up my phone to set the alarm. To toy with my feelings, again, Mino sent another text. My heart swelled a bit (I didn’t want that to happen but it did), as I rushed to put on my passcode to open it.

 

“I’m at the usual spot. Come join me.”

 

Those few sentences cracked me up. In a bad way. Who the hell was this text meant for? Probably not Seunghoon, because I recalled they stopped hanging out a while back ago, after that night when Mino returned home and went straight to his room and 10 minutes later Seunghoon followed back with a severe expression on his face. They barely even talked since, and Mino started going out late at night, only came home after everyone had already gone to sleep. Everyone except me, but I doubted if he even noticed. It was better that he didn’t, because if it were me, I wouldn’t want anyone to know that I was crying at 2 AM while taking a shower. Typical heart-broken cry baby bullshit, I thought, despite the bitter feeling stuck in my chest knowing that the soft cries that faded into water in the bathroom was from Mino. _Freakish Mino_. The cheerful dude with the irresistible charisma that got people swayed left and right, was freaking crying, and in those lonely nights I would spend hours sitting in the hall with my back against the wall listening to those sounds. Glad he didn’t know I was there. But it became too much of a trouble now, because he didn’t know and yet the text found its way to _my_ number. What kind of joke was that?

 

After the debate that went down inside my head in which I basically called myself a little piece of pathetic ass, and my alter-ego counter-punched it with a slap on my inner soul, and then a couple more punches and curse words, I replied:

 

“Which one?”

 

Without anticipating his reply in probably half an hour, I was going to put down my phone, but the dots showing that he was typing stopped me. He texted the name of the bar and I realized it. That was the bar Winner went to one time after winning the first Mcountdown but had not returned since. I didn’t know he was a frequent there. “Omw,” I texted back as I rushed to change and put on my nigh jacket (without forgetting a little bit of perfume, just a little, the kind that he once described as the classical expensive type. I don’t trust his words when it came to perfume, but whatever). I wrapped a scarf around my face and put my glasses on to be safe and headed downstair. When I sneaked out, Seunghoon and Jinwoo were still up; I could hear them whispering and laughing inside Seunghoon’s room.

 

I arrived at 12 and the bar was at the pivot of chaos. I found Mino sitting in the darkest corner talking nonsense to an old bartender who probably didn’t know who we are. I said hi and proceeded to pull the chair which was way too close to him out to sit on. Mino naturally put his right arm around my shoulders and asked:

 

“They have soft drinks here if you don’t feel like drinking.”

 

I tried not to laugh. Dude for sure thought I was someone else. I politely declined his offer and ordered a rum and coke for myself.

 

“You drink today.” He exclaimed.

 

“I usually don’t?” I answered, here’s to find out who the hell you think I was.

 

“No you kinda do. You just don’t really like drinking with me.” Mino said with a surprisingly sad voice. My shoulder shrank a bit with that discovery. I too, should stop pretend that finding out who I was supposed to be was a fun game to me. Raising my glass, I cheered at him:

 

“Well, for whatever reasons, today I drink. Okay? Drink up.”

 

Everything went wrong at that moment. Because Mino started crying, and screw me if I knew what parts of what I said triggered him. He cried, _ugly at that_ , as he attempted to say something. I couldn’t hear much, thanks to the pumping music from the stereo near us.

 

“We never had a chance to talk about it.” Mino said something like that, but I kept asking him. “What? I couldn’t hear you?” At one point, I gave up, and just nodded along while Mino muttered a conversation with himself that totally didn’t include me responding or even listening.

 

“Hey, let’s go back home, you are drunk.” When the last call was announced, I tried to pull him up from the table. “Get a hold of yourself, you hear me?” Mino pulled his arm back and slightly protested.

 

“I’m not drunk.”

 

“Jesus, you were rapping and crying.” I sighed as I kept pulling him.

 

“No I didn’t,” he said, trying to get up by himself, only to fell on to me. “Jezzz,” I mumbled to myself  “What a burdensome person.”

 

“I could hear you, you know.” He grinned while all of a sudden putting his arms around my waist tightly. I was dumbfounded, but decided to let him be. In his mind, I was someone else. Might as well enjoy the role.

 

“Were you always like this? Geez.” I couldn’t help but sighing again. Mino, Mino, Mino, the causes of all the problems. The main character of all the dramas. The reason of all the heartaches. I reluctantly put my hand on his back as we walked outside. The walk home is more than 30 minutes, and buses stop running. I could have called a cab, God knew I could, but I couldn’t risk letting anyone see, or more importantly, hear Mino in his current state. At least that was what I told myself; I probably just wanted to walk with Mino, with his arms around my waist, pretending I didn’t know that I was supposed to be someone else. I shamelessly enjoyed that, being close to him without him knowing that I was. Less risky, I concluded. Nam Taehyun wanted no mistakes, no dramas, no recklessness. (He just wanted Mino. But Mino is all three.)

 

But when we got to the stair, to go back to the beginning of this story, dude pushed me against the wall and started kissing me. _Just who the hell was I supposed to be_ , I angrily thought to myself, but not for too long, because dude went deeper. I’d be lying if I said my knees didn’t go weak or that my heart wasn’t beating so fast all I could hear was ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump, or that his tongue didn’t taste like alcohol and smell just as intoxicated. The whole thing was messy, my heartbeat, his shorten breath and muted growls, andrenaline in my blood, alcohol; for the fist time in my life everything became so clear in my head: the reasons why I spent all those hours waiting up during the nights, how I became anxious by the mere mention of his name, how his half-ass texts got me all worked up. I struggled to not turn him around and kiss back, ruthlessly, breathlessly, because that would be a bad idea. So, with all the strength I had left, I pushed him, wiped my lips, and headed upstair. He caught my hand and insisted that we walked together so I let him.

 

By the time we got in, it was already 2:30. He left me at the door and went straight to his room without even saying goodnight. “Good night, hyung,” I bitterly said before his door closed entirely. I just figured out who I was, as I saw the light in Seunghoon’s room went off right when Mino got into his room. I went to mine, took off my clothes, rolled them up and threw them into the corner of my closet. Harshly. Because _screw this shit_ , I spent several hours of my night trying to fight this unsettling urge of hitting things, the anxiety of just what the hell was going on, only to find out that I was a substitute. To hell with that. Nam Taehyun ain’t no second options. Not for Seunghoon, not for anyone. I almost said it out loud, but the anger that consumed me faded away as soon as the sleepy feeling sneaked in.

 

I had long thought about what we were gonna say the next morning if Mino remembered things. But then I really didn’t have to think about it. Because Mino always forgot.

 

Not just this time.

 

./.

 

 


	5. PART III: CRIMSON

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: [Slightly] Darker vibe and mention of psychological disturbances.

 

**PART III**

**CRIMSON**

**7\. you who know nothing of loneliness**

 

That night, when Mino left the small apartment located 5 minutes away from YG building, he knew that it was the last time he'd ever be there. Just three hours ago, everything seemed so normal; they went to a TV station, they had to record a show, they went home at four in the afternoon, Seungyoon was happily going out with his college friends, Jinwoo stayed in for a soap opera marathon and Taehyun went shopping. Mino went to meet Seunghoon in his apartment, and as usual, they spent the rest of the evening here. There was nothing new, except that after this, there would not be another time things could ever happen in that order. They would still have schedules and days off, the members would still go out, have fun, or stay in to watch movies, but Mino wouldn't find himself walking on this familiar street, follow this distinct path that leads to this specific place again. Funny how life took its turn in a strange way. One word, and what has been for so long could easily be replaced, discarded, forgotten; life vanishes even when everything stays the same, same old conversations, same old people, even the sky has the same color, but for the people living in it, everything is never the same again.

 

Today, he asked Seunghoon to stop whatever was happening between them.

 

Without a second thought, Seunghoon agreed to it. Strangely, that hurt him more than he could imagine. He tried to ask Seunghoon, why didn't you say anything, well knowing that he wasn't at a position to ask.

 

Mino has thought about this - the idea of breaking up - for more than once. Every time, he felt a little different. There were days when it seemed like he didn't need to see Seunghoon for the rest of his life and he would be perfectly fine with it. There were days when it was suffocating just thinking about it. There were days the idea was estranged to him like a floating seaweed on a strange shore amongst restless tides; reflecting on their relationship caused him an out-of-body experience in which he could visibly see himself sitting on his chair - elbows on his knees, face buried in his hands, or walking around in his small room, or continuously inhaling smokes in the parking lot; all the while, his face etched with shadow and deep thoughts. Dazed and confused, lost and anxious, wounded and in love; wandering amongst those thoughts, Seunghoon was the image of his fear.

 

He remembered mama always tells him that it is hard to be in love. Mama has never been in love, even though she had him and his sister - but she wasn’t in love, and it is okay, because she had them. Mama would tell him that no matter how old people are, they would forever be too young for love. And that sometimes what we think of as love will not necessarily be something beneficial. “But ain’t you lonely,” he asked, “spending time by yourself and not with someone else?” Mama would smile at him, her soft hand tenderly patting his head, “it depends on how you define loneliness. I am alone, but I am not lonely.” Mino wouldn’t understand it then, but as time goes by, he went through too many moments in life when he could identify the differences between the two. He wasn’t alone, but he sure was lonely. The excitement and mesmerization of a young crush would pass away too quickly too easily, and most often times, he would be left asking himself why he couldn’t get out of that suffocated feeling of being utterly alone.

 

Loneliness. It was what someone with such honest eyes and loud laugh like Mino shouldn’t have. It was what someone with such bright personality and quick wit like Seunghoon shouldn’t have. But for some reasons, the two boys came together, looking like they were okay, and entered too quickly a relationship. Mino didn’t realize it then, how  _not okay_  it was when he was too obsessed with Seunghoon, that a moment not touching or seeing him would drive him mad. He told himself that it was a young crush, that after a while when he could be certain about their relationship, it would change. But it didn’t. It got worse - his obsession turned into anxiety, jealousy, and then doubt. He doubted when Seunghoon wouldn’t want to hold hands in public - regardless of his obviously reasonable excuse - they  _were_  in public. He doubted when Seunghoon retreated to his own room and not engaging with his confrontations. “I’m tired,” he would said, “can we do this later?” That night, Mino crushed the mirror in his room with his palms, but he felt better right away when Seunghoon kicked the door open running to him. The image of Seunghoon rushing to find him, his horrored and painful eyes when looking at Mino’s bleeding palms, for some reasons, eased up his nervousness. Mino was happily convinced that he was just thinking too much. Seunghoon kept staring into his wound for the rest of the night.

  
“You are a tender kid.” Seunghoon then said, his eyes fixed on him, one hand holding his hands on his laps, the other caressing the side of his face. Mino would never be able to get over how that small gesture intrigued such mixed emotions in him. “I don’t know what it is, but you wanted me so damn much, and that scared me a little.” Upon hearing, Mino smiled guiltily while fighting the urge to break the moment and pulling Seunghoon into a long, deep kiss. He did anyway, despite the scratches on the inside of his fingers; the blood marks violently tainted the older one’s cheek. He cupped Seunghoon’s face in his hands, whispered in between kisses, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He ignored Seunghoon’s uncertain eyes, pretended that there was nothing broken, not the mirror, not their kisses, not his soul. Seunghoon’s white skin was painted in red, his eyelashes trembled; he reluctantly broke their kisses after a while and murmured:

 

“This is the last time, okay.” He wiped his lips. A hint of red followed his knuckle. “We’re not doing this in our dorm.” Receiving the wet tissues from Mino, he silently cleaned up and left the room, leaving the younger one with the shattered pieces of glass. Mino would then take care of his own palms. They never talked again about that incident, but once in a while Mino would caught Seunghoon staring at his hands a few seconds too long, only to turn away quickly once he realized Mino was paying attention. It was also the only time Seunghoon would break his rule of “never do anything when they’re at home”. Mino, too, wouldn’t try anything again to confront Seunghoon about it.

 

It was addictive, kissing Seunghoon and feeling his breath in his lips, running his fingers in his soft, messy hair. He couldn’t understand his own feelings, anything was enough and everything was not enough. Seunghoon to him is like a drug, the kind of drug that will ease his anxiety but a little too much would destroy him. The narcotics that heal but more often than not will end up taking its patients's life.

 

Mino didn’t realize it then. Love is  _not_  supposed to make you hurt yourself.

 

Nor would it make you okay with that.

 

* * *

 

The first time Mino met Seunghoon, he was so impressed with the cheerful boy who cracked jokes so easily and effortlessly. For the first time in his life, he met someone that could make him laugh so hard his stomach hurt. The admiration soon turned into confusion when he realized he wanted more from Seunghoon than just a few laughs. The more they spent time together, the more comfortable they became. Seunghoon eagerly joined him in every silly activities he came up with. Mino showed him all the rapping techniques and let him borrow all his old mixtapes. He was so,  _so_  happy when Seunghoon gave him feedbacks, praised him, and asked him to help fixing his pronunciations.

 

“Your Busan accent is cute.” Mino once said to a very frustrated Seunghoon who was told by the teacher that his voice was just not fit to do Hip-hop. “You don’t need to change your voice for him. Just find a way to make it work.”

 

Seunghoon scratched his head:

 

“I tried, but my tone is too high. I wanted to have deeper voice, like yours. Your tone is so cool.”

 

Mino smiled upon his comment, but managed to hide his obvious content:

 

“Well, to be fair, I have been doing this for quite a while. You’ll get better.” He proceeded to look at Seunghoon’s lyrics and explained. “The trick was to make strong words that require clear pronunciation rhyme if you haven’t got a flow yet. It will create natural rhythm for your flow. Try with simple 4/4 beat first, before you go for long sentences.” Mino then demonstrated some of Seunghoon’s parts.

 

“Dude you’re so cool.” Seunghoon would grab his shoulders in excitement, his head got too close to Mino’s and it would make him stutter a bit. “I freaking love your voice.”

 

“LOL. Okay, take it easy.” Mino laughed to cover his nervousness. “You can create a fake voice too when rapping. Did you notice how I sometimes use that growling voice to make special effect? That ain’t my natural voice, so instead of thinking that you have to change your voice, think of the sounds you want to make. That will be your rapping or singing voice.”

 

“Oh shit. I didn’t know that.” Seunghoon enthusiastically exclaimed. Mino wanted to laugh but he stopped himself. Of course you wouldn’t know, silly, he thought to himself. You just started to learn. The thought that he would be Seunghoon’s private rap tutor entered his mind; strangely, he enjoyed it a little bit too much.

 

“Okay kiddo you’re gonna be my private tutor alright?” Seunghoon pointed his pinky finger at him, and Mino tried to keep his cool while offering his little finger. He was startled when the cheerful one quickie entwined his finger with his and pulled him into a big hug. “Thank you soooo much. Hyung will forever be in debt of you!”

 

“It’s alright hyung. Such exaggeration. Forever is a long time.” Mino shyly responded. He, too, couldn’t help but smiling at Seunghoon’s childish expression.

 

“Lee Seunghoon does what his highness promises. So you better kept yours.” His hyung winked at him and they both laughed.

 

There went the fun days that soon got dark because of the stressful competition that came shortly after.

 

Now thinking about that, there was something already falling apart during those painful days that Mino then never realized. When Mino found Seunghoon alone in the restroom, blood profusely blotted into the handkerchief Seunghoon pressed against his nose and dripped onto the sink, he was too freaked out to realize that it was not at all an anomaly. It was something that would be constantly kept deep down by Seunghoon’s regular jokes.

 

Seunghoon, he knew  _pain_. He knew it too intimately to ever show it.

 

Mino should have known that with people like Seunghoon, you should never expect him to let you into his head.

 

But then again, wasn’t Mino the same way?

 

./.


	6. the greatest bastard

 

 

**PART III**

**CRIMSON**

**8\. the greatest bastard**

 

 

Inside of us, there exists a bottomless pit of desperation.

 

A dead cold abyss. Everyone has one of those, everyone knows they have something rotten inside of them, but to know how deep it is, what it contains, and what will be given birth to from it, is impossible. _Impossible_. One simple word that bears the weight of all the irrational indisputability of the immutable dreams that was broken but never faded. We can never know how infinite our abyss could go and what we have in there. Even us cannot know, you see. Our sympathetic nervous system doesn’t know. Our subconsciousness doesn’t know. Our learnt behaviour doesn’t know. We simply know nothing even of our own desire. So we stay silent in the face of every posed questions, why laugh, why cry, why even live. _Why._

 

We stay silent in the face of the jokes of fate. We stay silent in the face of thousands of things that motivate us, beg of us, pleade us to act, do something, say something, and get out of this situation. At the end, all we can do is to keep the voicelessness thick as midnight shadow intact in its muted sound; we smell the stenches of deviant thoughts in the air but we couldn’t lead them straight because we have no idea what went wrong and what they were supposed to be. If everything about ourselves is not that messed up, then what would it take to not have it messed up; or is everything always going to be messed up anyway but in another way? If you were to relive a moment of your past, can your future be of any difference?

 

Seunghoon thought not. Life is not a Hollywoord movie; an action is but a dot in a series of causal actions; our choice in a given moment is but a dot in a series of choices that derived from our thinking brain – the result of nature and nurture, indoctrination and whatelse inherently ingrained in our DNA code. So no, because he is him and if he was given a chance to redo he would do the same thing over and over again; the fools stay foolish, the selfish remains so, and the ignorant would never learn any better. He could do something other than that which got he wish he could undo, but just as insane. In case it was insane. It could even be ludicrous, lethargy, and lewd, or just simply innocuous.

 

Therefore, he, despite his similarity to the bared eye so foolish as to think that if they can go back in time they'll be a different person, live a different way and have a much decent life, still thinks he would become another version of himself with another version of life that might be a tad benign but still probably as crushed. To think of it, because he was constrained within his own disheveled and limited intelligence, he cannot draw another outcome aside from that which he was experiencing. He is a slave to himself and act under the control of his own foolish brain, he who does not know anything else will not have anything else. So all this pain, all this darkness of his pit, all the dirty and filthy cracks inside him, alas, all of them are just the products of his own cogitation, torn and bewildered, and so he suffered them without a lament. Because everybody else in this world is also contentedly being their own slaves the way everything which constitutes their existence wants them to be, and just like him, they were desperate to ask if they should have react in a different way, and if they do, would things be any different. Why, yes. The answer is yes. Different, but perhaps not any better. But he is also ignorant of what defines better; in actuality there is only one future that has already been determined. It was determined from the minute the second he were born into this world; he whose shape was of human, he whose readily spreaded legs were shoved with the so-called nature and ethos, would live the way this world want him to live and die the way this world want him to die.

In reality, if he were somebody else, perhaps he would have done things differently, but one never knows: he is him with all this weakness of emotions and he has no other way to live but to keep making mistakes without complaining nor blaming; it was something he cannot restrain and just like everybody else, he didn’t wish upon anybody what was imposed on him, he didn’t need anyone to know how deep his abyss is and to which extent his cup is full – what belongs to him he would endure alone, and at the same time, he knew that people around him are struggling with their bottomless pit, and because they did not know his pain, he as well din’t know how much they were hurt.

If the question of when did things go wrong was asked; perhaps it didn’t go wrong because of one action nor one word, _he_ went wrong since the very day he was born into this world.

 

* * *

  
Seunghoon stopped in the middle of the road and looked across the street. It was five pm on a normal Friday afternoon; different groups of students were leaving the university. From five hundred feet away, he could still hear all the voices and the laughters. Some were talking about going to a norebang, some to a nearby restaurant, some other students were making phonecalls, and a few couples quietly walked to the bus station right in front of the school gate. Seunghoon pulled his hoodie over his hat, fixed his sunglasses and put on a facemask. People don’t generally recognize him in a crowd, due to his –he thought- average face, but he couldn’t risk being spotted like this on a street, alone, on a busy Friday afternoon. It has become one of his habits; whenever he has spare time, he would spend it walking around by himself, stopping by street vendors for some snacks, and most of the time, he would find himself hanging out at one of the universities, people-watching. The feeling of being utterly invisible in a sea of young people who don’t know who he is and don’t even pay any remote attention to him was unusually comforting. He walked through the crossroad and everytime the light changed, a bit of his existence vanished into the traffic noises and the flow of strangers passing through him like ocean waves. It reminded him of the early years when he first left his hometown to find a future in this city. He found one – just not as bright as he used to imagine. But let’s not pretend that he envisioned something marvelous. Somewhere along the path, his dream became broken pieces of youth splattering all over the disappearing street corners.

 

The first few times, Jinwoo asked to come with him, but he politely declined. He didn’t want his best friend to think he was trying to isolate himself – but what can he say, Jinwoo just shrugged and looked at him with those concerned eyes yet. “Come freaking on,” he would tell the know-it-all hyung, “not everything is about that fool.” Jinwoo kept staring at him for a while, then lazily responded, “yeah right. Not everything is about that fool. You and your tired excuses.” He would get mad at Jinwoo, but then deep down he knew, he _knows_ , that Jinwoo might be right. “You know this is really unhealthy right?” Jinwoo would sometimes say, and Seunghoon stayed silent at that.

 

“You know, hyung.” He said, looking Jinwoo straight in the eyes. “Some of us are just unfit.”

 

The slight horror in Jinwoo’s glare back didn’t make him feel any better. “There are things that just cannot be discussed.” He paused for a bit, then gently spoke. “But you already know this.”

 

“We are not talking about me.” Jinwoo shook his head, the sense of fear refused to leave those beautiful eyes.

 

“I’m not.” Seunghoon patted Jinwoo in the shoulder. “All I’m saying is, we all have things we gotta take care of by ourselves.”

 

“That was nonsense.” Jinwoo scoffed. “You and your philosophical bullshit, I ain’t the one to deal with it.” He stood up from Seunghoon’s bed and walked to the door. “Isolation wouldn’t make things better. And I say this because I _knew_ it.” He said his last words with a surprising irk in his voice. Seunghoon smiled guiltily – it is always hard to push Jinwoo to drop his calm and cheerful mask. He is probably the only one who could. He is good at that – break the tenderest boy, annoy the most peaceful person, and whatelse? Getting the innocent one involved in his messes. However, in all honesty, Seunghoon didn’t care that much. He never did.

 

The first few months after ending things with Mino, he couldn’t sleep a blink. He joked with everyone that he was going to take the nickname Panda from Seungri hyung, and Jinwoo reluctantly laughed at that comment while adding on that he actually looked like a skeleton more so a panda. Not to his surprise, Mino’s face froze upon hearing it. Seunghoon saw it all; he wasn’t bitter. He wasn’t regretful.  He wasn’t even sure what he felt about that fateful evening after which everything took a hasty change. There was that hollowed emptiness inside that echoed every bit of his emotions, but somehow those voices couldn’t get out. During the endless nights, Seunghoon would lie in his bed and stare at the ceiling. He tried to recite some memories, the good ones, the bad ones, but all that came to him was a big void of nothingness, sunken into his heavy chest. And he started to wonder when things started going wrong.

 

There was that time - the first time Seunghoon felt threatened that Mino would become something too close to his heart.

 

He told himself that he did not fall for it – _any_ of it – the warm looks that Mino gave him, the handgrips that would become tighter than his short breath, or the endless conversations going on between them that, for more than a few times, make him forget who he was. He was supposed to not enjoy all the attention with which Mino so eagerly showered him. He was supposed to not pay any attention to the way Mino would laugh longer than anyone else did when he told a funny story. Their casual backhugs shouldn’t have lasted that long, and Mino’s hands shouldn’t have entwined with his, nor should those delicate fingers have casually lay on his thighs when they were sitting next to each other in a bus. He could have stopped it all, but he did not. Instead, on an evening in a day of three years ago, in one of those episodes when Seunghoon _desperately_ need to feel needed, to feel some body warmth against his, he put a suggestive note in Mino’s pocket, well knowing that the boy would come for him. And Mino did.

 

Seunghoon could have stopped it right there. He _well_ could have. He could have pretended that he was really going for a walk. Then he saw Mino from afar, confusedly and reluctantly coming his way, and he chose to go through with it. He let Mino make him lead the way to his old apartment. He let Mino follow him in every heavy step he took on that staircase. And when they got to in front of the door, he could still have turned around and left the scene. If he had done so, maybe the future as he knew of right now would be different. But his blurred mind let the boy hug him from behind, bury his head onto his neck and whisper restlessly into his bare skin when he said – “hyung, can you open that _damn_ door already?” And Seunghoon did.

 

It was not a point from which you could return. With his back against the wall and Mino in front of him, Seunghoon kept looking down at the floor. A thousand of things ran across his mind at that point – some of those screamed stop, but Seunghoon chose to mute those voices. When Mino lifted his chin up, he was forced to face with a joke of fate that he _knew_ he would deeply, deeply regret later on. Mino’s eyes pierced into him something that looked like foretold dread, and he chewed it raw in his lips when the dry and reluctant kiss started to take form. Mino didn’t know what he was doing. Seunghoon, on the other hand, did.  

 

In his lifetime, there were oh so many things Seunghoon wasn’t proud of.

 

_Leading Mino on was one of those._

 

./.


	7. if you hear me fall

**PART III**

**CRIMSON**

**9\. if you hear me fall**

 

 

“Hyung, why do you keep making that 21 year old joke?”

Taehyun’s sudden question took Seunghoon by surprise. He directed his eyes to the couch where the boy was sitting. With his usual smile, Seunghoon replied:

“A joke is all. Why do you ask?”

The younger one wasn’t one bit convinced by his act. He asked again:

“You know why.”

Seunghoon didn’t bother to put away his smile. “I actually don’t. Is there a reason?”

Taehyun’s eyebrows raised at the older one’s answer. Putting his phone away, Taehyun slightly shook his hair out of his face as he spoke:

“There is one. I prefer not to be the one to ask, but I did. Might I get an honest answer for once?”

“They’re so wrong about you.” Seunghoon continued to smile. “You actually care a lot.”

“Don’t make it about me.” Taehyun scorned. He didn’t like the atmostphere, nor the fact that he actually was the one to stir this conversation. He wasn’t even sure why he started it, but he did. Last night, it was the first time Taehyun ever saw Mino being that fucked up, and he was certain it has something to do with Seunghoon. Whoelse should it ever be. He shouldn’t care, and it wasn’t his business; he made peace with the fact that Mino was pulling a rebound on him, and he shamelessly took it. But to tell himself that he would be alright while clearly knowing that it was a wrecked ass lie was one thing, to see Mino being that messed up was another. He didn’t want to admit it – but that hurt.

 

It hurt, because any time Mino wasn’t drunk, it was always gonna be about Seunghoon.

 

* * *

 

  
“God fucking dammit.”

Taehyun jumped out of his bed and went straight into Mino’s room from where he heard Mino’s loud curse and a violent noise that followed. The first thing he saw was Mino, standing in the middle of the room and pieces of glasses all around him. Taehyun took a quick glance and realized that the noise probably was from Mino throwing his skateboard at the mirror.

“Hyung what the fuck….?” He almost yelled at Mino but managed to low his voice down. “What the actual fuck are you doing?”

“Go away, kid.” Without turning back, Mino motioned his hand to send Taehyun off. That gesture pissed Taehyun off more than anything Mino ever did. He tried to keep his calm, and asked again, with amuch serious tone:

“I’m asking you a question. Answer me.”

“It’s none of your business.” Mino slowly turned to look at Taehyun straight in the face. Taehyun unconsciously stepped back when he saw those eyes. He barely recognized Mino – his eyes were visibly red with bloodshot and his facial expression so distorted Taehyun wondered if he even knew the man. He tried to speak up, more calmly this time:

“Hey, take it easy man. What is going on?”

“Nothing.” Mino pulled his gaze away and started walking toward his bed in his bare foot.

“Hey be caref…” Taehyun didn’t finish his sentence when the older guy stepped his right foot on one of the glass pieces on the floor, but he kept on going as if he didn’t feel anything.

“Dude what the…” Taehyun freaked out and instantly went to get bandages. His mind was blank as he found himself busy going through the medical box in the living room. Luckily Seungyoon already went out with his friend earlier – he couldn’t even fathom the idea of Seungyoon being at home and witnessing Mino in this state. He clenched his teeth – maybe Seungyoon should be at home now, and witnessing this shit. Somebody gotta stop that dude from burning the whole world. He noticed the laughters inside Seunghoon’s room, and a rage quickly consumed him. He was this close to walk through that door, drag Seunghoon out and ask him to deal with that motherfucker by himself. But for some reasons, Taehyun just silently brought all the meds and bandages he needed and went into

Mino’s room again, only to find him sitting in the corner of his bed, blood everywhere.

For a second, it was almost funny that all Taehyun could think about was the carpet being tainted.

He went straight to Mino and laid out all the tools on his bed. Mino still buried his face in his hands as if he didn’t realize Taehyun was right there trying to touch him up.  
“Here, why don’t you go and wash your wound and I’ll take care of it.” Taehyun patiently said. He didn’t want to trigger Mino one more time – even though what he really wanted to do at that moment was to slap the senses back to Mino. But he didn’t – and couldn’t. By now, he could put the pieces together and recognized that there was something deeply unsettling about the older guy. His mood changed so easily and he did things subconsciously so frequently. In other words, he might not be mentally stable. Trying to be as gentle as possible, he softly repeated his words as he reluctantly patted Mino’s right shoulder.

Mino slightly twitched his head and looked at Taehyun confusedly:

“Oh, Hyunie. What are you doing here?” Taehyun was so taken aback at his response. He frowned and pointed at Mino’s right foot:

“You are bleeding.”

“Oh.” Mino’s gaze followed the direction to which Taehyun was pointing. He faintly whimpered when he saw the blood. “What have I done, aish.”

“You threw your skateboard into your mirror apparently.” Taehyun carefully chose his words as he contentedly observed Mino. His facial expression didn’t change at all. Good freaking job, hyung. He sighed as he continued:

“Drop the act, hyung. Don’t try to fool me. You know what you are doing.” He silently laughed at himself for even remotely worrying about Mino’s mental health. Dude was just violently aggressive and now he tried to find a way out of it. For some reasons, that made Taehyun feel a little better.

“We’ll talk later. Now go wash your wound.” He stopped for a second, then changed his mind. “Nevermind, sit there. Don’t go anywhere, I’ll go grab a towel.”

By the time he got back, Mino had already put bandages on his wound. He smiled at the sight of Taehyun:

“Oh, thank you. It was a little cut, that’s all. I have wet tissues so I went ahead and took care of it.”

“Do you need help cleaning this mess?” The younger man slowered his step as he figured Mino would be okay now.

“No, leave it.” Mino tried to stand up but he stumbled and sat right back on his bed. “Don’t worry,” He still managed to say, “I will take care of it.”

“Okay…” Taehyun awkwardly stopped next to his bed. “I guess I will be going then.” As he turned away, he heard Mino’s faint voice.

“No…”

“You said something?” He looked behind his shoulder to find Mino reaching his hand out to him.

“No. I mean yes. Stay.” Mino stuttered a bit and hid his hand away. “Can you stay for a bit?”

“I guess…” Taehyun replied hesistantly. He looked around for a chair, but Mino gestured Taehyun to come sit next to him, so he did. As he uncomfortably sat down, he cleared his throat:

“So what’s that all about?” He figured that was a far reach; Mino probably wouldn’t even say anything for the rest of the night – if he knew Mino at all. And believe him, he knew Mino.

“I’m sorry, Taehyunie.” To his surprise, Mino suddenly said. His apology got him bewildered. He found himself at a loss of word, as Mino continued:

“I have been an asshole to you, haven’t I?”

Pretty much. Taehyun thought, but he didn’t say anything. He was wrong – Mino was much troubled than he thought. If Mino breaking shit and getting drunk worried him, then this definitely was more disturbing. He almost scoffed at the thought. Nam Taehyun, just how abused you are to think that way? For one time, he was being decent, and you actually thought he was crazy for doing it.  
“Well, if you put it that way…” He tried to find something not too dismissive to say. Mino was definitely an asshole to him – but he was getting at something, and Taehyun needed to know what it was gonna be.

“Do you like me, Hyunie?” Mino abruptly changed the topic – and once again Taehyun found himself confounded.

“What is this all about?” He immediately went on a defense mode.

“You waited for me all those nights. You cleaned up after me. You rushed to me right away when you heard noises from my room...” Mino stopped there a few seconds too long, his voice became a tad trembling, but he continued on. “Do you like me?”

Taehyun felt exposed. He felt this unanticipated shame rising from within, like a criminal being caught redhandedly. He thought of things to say. But all his words seemed to have left him. What do you say in situations like this? When you are confronted by the dude that you liked, and wanted to strangle so much at the same time, about your feelings? And what rights does he even have to talk to you like that? Taehyun had no idea. He thought he had seen it all and felt it all. But Mino’s unfounded vulnerability that was being flaunted to him right now wrenched his heart better than any negligence in the past.

Before he could say anything, Mino turned to him:

“Please don’t like me.”

Once again, Mino managed to strike him. Hard. He quietly shook his head; his lips twitched into a crooked smile. For one second he let himself think of some other endings than the ones that he would have the courage to imagine. Those blunt words found its way into the darkest corner inside, like a tree with these ever-expanding branches that rooted itself in his heart, gripping rigidly to every single heartbeat.

“What are you saying, man. We just do stuff is all.” He weakly reacted.

“I figured you wouldn’t.” Mino smiled at him. His uneasiness was loosen, and Taehyun hated himself for not being able to stop it from happening. But he scoffed instead, and made up some more lies that he knew he would so gonna regret.

“Whatever hyung. I don’t care.”

“I’m not trying to use you or anything.” Mino went on. Half of Taehyun wanted to stand up and leave the damn room – but the rest of him has already disintegrated elsewhere. He didn’t want to have this conversation – he was okay living in the dark. It was easy making up your own deception where you didn’t have to face up with reality. Mino had to go ahead and lay it out in front of him. Now he would have to admit his defeat every single time he would step through that door (and he would, he knew he would) – drunk or sober – and be reminded of how much of a coward he was today, that he didn’t have the nerve to tell Mino any truth.

“It was just hard to constantly be reminded of things you lost when you’re forced to be with yourself, you know.”

“Believe me, I know.” Taehyun bitterly snickered. He stood up as a sign of ending the conversation and briefly left the room. “Goodnight, hyung. Good luck taking care of this mess.”

“You could stay if you want to.” Mino’s faint voice followed him to the door, but he pretended not to have heard. He walked faster, hand grabbed so tightly on the back of his neck that the fingernails almost dug through his skin. Good fucking job, Nam Taehyun. Good fucking job. The vague noises coming from Seunghoon’s room made him even madder. Something told him that the reasons Mino broke all hell had something to do with Seunghoon’s joke today at the interview. He should have confronted Mino about it – but he didn’t actually want to hear anything. About why Mino went mad. About Seunghoon. About any of that stuff. He went straight into his room and slammed the door, but he was still conscious enough not to be too harsh. Gosh. One of these days he would eventually lose it. But not now, not today.

 

  
* * *

 

  
  
Inside his room, Mino stared at the glasses laying on the floor. His gaze gradually turned to the crack of the door to the other room across the hall. Realizing that Jinwoo was leaving, Mino almost jumped to close his own door before anyone could steal a glance at the scene inside. He stood there for a good five minutes with his head against the door. So he wouldn’t come anymore even when you hurt yourself. Mino slightly knocked his head into the cold surface. He caught himself doing so and instantly stepped back. Those types of behavior was exactly what he hated about you. But it wouldn’t matter now. Should it?

He went back to collect all the pieces on the floor using the towel Taehyun left him. The scars on his palm from a long time ago almost disappeared, and he actively thought of something else in order to stop himself from coming anywhere near the idea of revoking that mark again. Scars actually faded. He repeated to himself. It faded.  
People changed.

Let’s just collect all these damn pieces and put them to rest. Then proceed on with your night. He thought.

In the back of his mind, there was always that night where Seunghoon ran across the door to him and the taste of blood in his mouth was more alive than a mere anamnesis. Mino clinched his fist and put the everything, including the towel, into the trashcan at the corner of the room.

 

  
* * *

 

  
  
“I don’t know what’s the answer you’re looking for, but I don’t have it.” Seunghoon’s smile never left his lips as he calmly faced Taehyun’s confrontation. If only maknae knew how he hated himself right now.

“You know what?” Taehyun stood up from the couch and walked toward him. Seunghoon rattled a bit, but he stayed still. “You guys are a bunch of liars.” Taehyun walked past him as his shoulder bumped into his. “I don’t want to deal with it anymore.”

“Ain’t you with us though.” Seunghoon’s voice softly rised behind him.

Taehyun was stunned at Seunghoon’s comment. He paused for a moment before going on.

“I guess we all are.” He then said to himself when he was sure Seunghoon wouldn’t be able to hear it.  
  
  
  
  
  
One day, all of them would say to each other, “we gotta stop doing this”. For a different situation than the one they started.

But not today.  
  
  
./.


	8. when you broke my chest

****

 

**PART III**

**CRIMSON**

**10\. when you broke my chest**

 

 

“You’re still having those symtomps?” Jinwoo worriedly asked when handing me his handkerchief.  
  
  
“Eh, I’ll be fine.” I took it from his hand and quickly applied to my nose while tilting my head back. “I must have eaten too much sodium last night. That ramen was bomb though.”  
  
  
“That was the most scientific explanation I’ve ever heard from you. Nice try but that finding was not empirical.” Jinwoo softly chuckled, but he didn’t look convinced.  
  
  
“You used to have nosebleeds too didn’t you?” I ran my hand in the cold water, trying to clean the bloodmark on my right sleeve. “Damn why did I wear white today.”  
  
  
“It was one time only back then when we won W.I.N.” Jinwoo sighed; his hands were still slightly on my back as if he was afraid I would trip. “But you have been having this for how long? We are having our performance today too, you sure you’re okay?”  
  
  
“Nah, I’m alright. This is the first time in months.” I lied.  
  
  
“I’m gonna take you to the police to detect your lies, then to a doctor later on.” Jinwoo put his no-nonsense face on and I gave up.  
  
  
“Wooya, really, stop worrying.” I muttered. The stubborn bloodmark faded, leaving only a slight hint of redness. I decided to roll my sleeves up, noticing that Jinwoo has become strangely silent.  
“What’s happening, why ain’t you saying anything? Let it go, I said I’m okay.”  
  
  
“No…” Jinwoo stuttered a bit. “It was just, you haven’t called me that in a while.”  
  
  
“Mm.” I didn’t say anything and put the handkerchief into the running water instead, trying to wash it. Jinwoo stopped me:  
  
  
“Leave it, we don’t have time for that.”  
  
  
“That’s yours though. You sure about it?”  
  
  
“Where are you gonna keep it? In your front pocket? It will make you look like you just wet your pants.” Jinwoo’s joke made me burst out laughing.  
  
  
“Dude, you’re funny. How come you never show that on camera. Drop that innocent act of yours.” Jinwoo just shrugged at my comment.  
  
  
“Acting dumb is your one job. I’m the visual line.”  
  
  
“Dude that hurts. I choreographed too.” I jokingly protested.  
  
  
“What you ain’t gettin’ paid for ain’t your job.” He patted me playfully on my shoulder.  
  
  
“Ouch! Hyung, one of these days someone is gonna expose your sass and you’re gonna regret it.”  
  
  
“Then I will be the one with both look and intelligence. Could settle for less.” Jinwoo winked at me.  
  
  
“Kim Jinwoo the sassy prince charming of WINNER. This sounds so wrong.” I chuckled.  
  
  
“Bitter dumb rapper whose dance is for free is such a poor juxtaposition.” Jinwoo’s comeback got meaner by the seconds, and we both laughed.  
  
  
“You know, Seunghoonie.” He gently smiled at me. “I’m glad we got to this point.”  
  
  
“Me too, Wooya. Me too.” I grabbed his right shoulder tightly but be extra careful not to pull him into a hug. Jinwoo noticed my gesture and sneered. “Come on, we’re beyond this now.”  
  
  
“Well you never know. I got that effect on people.”  
  
  
“Go pour that in your lads coz I ain’t one.” He swiped my hands of his shoulder at once and gave me the side eye that perhaps aside from me no one has ever witnessed. I patted his head:  
  
  
“You’re the one what got away, okay. Now let’s go back before gossips are out that we’re in the bathroom together for a long time.”  
  
  
“The deed is done, sweetheart. The deed is done.” Jinwoo laughed as he led the way out. I rolled the half-wet handkerchief and put it into my coat as I followed his steps. The stage and the crowd awaited us beyond this door and I walked straight into the illuminating light. The hankerchief in my pocket dripped cold water against my chest.  
  
 

* * *

  
  
  
Two weeks ago, Mino told me, “We gotta stop doing this.”  
  
  
We were sitting on our bed – Mino finished putting on his shirt as he said those words, and I was laying there in the dark, thinking of things to say. Or not to say, as a matter of fact. A thousand things came across my mind. I wasn’t prepared for this – or rather, I have not thought of this scenario. It might very well happen one day, yet strangely, that future always seemed so far away that I have never bothered to form it into a thought. Why now? What happened? I wanted to ask, but instead, all I said was one simple sentence:  
  
  
“Thought you’d never said.”  
  
  
Mino looked upset. He turned around to face me. The look on his face somehow pained me than I imagined. I didn’t know whatelse to say. What is there to say - things like this don’t generally last. But it _did_ , for quite a while,  _didn’t it_? I looked at Mino, who with restlessness and bitterness in his voice, was urging me to answer what I meant when I said such thing.  
  
  
“I probably didn’t mean much. Things like this don’t generally last.” I replied, with a faint hope that he would realize some parts of it were just mere wrong.  _We_ lasted. We  _lasted_ up until this point, and you were calling for an end to it.  
  
  
“Things like this, huh?” I heard Mino scoffing, and I could imagine how painful he must have felt right at this moment, because after all has been said and done, I was still that guy who refused to give him any bit of conscience. I was that guy receiving everything and all I have ever given Mino was just a little “mm-hmm” and smiles whenever he would become upset. The boy always took it, without complaining. But I guess he reached his limit – we reached our limit on that day of some times ago, when we got into a fight in which Mino smashed the mirror in his room with his palms.  
  
  
We haven’t talked about it since it happened, but on the back of my mind, I remembered the vivid red color mixing up with small pieces of glasses on the ground, Mino with his messed up palms that were dripping blood and his face suddenly brightened up upon my arrival. A twist in my stomach hit me the same way I would feel whenever I saw the reflection of myself in a mirror – darkened eyes, skin paled as paper with a bloody nose. I had stared into his wounded palm for the rest of that night. The bloody kiss that he forcefully grabbed me into smelled like my rotten inside, as he kept mumbling ‘sorry’ into my mouth that got me feeling like I was broken into pieces. The tender kid that was losing himself bits by bits in front of me, and I didn’t know how and when that happened. I only knew one thing –  _I was there_. The scariest of all thing - not my wrecked body with constant back pain and nosebleed under stresses, not the constant accidents that happened on stage and long days of hospitalization when I spent hours trying to recolor the everything that seemed to have turned in to ash - was him, losing the bright halo that he had – because of  _me_.  
  
  
.  
.  
.  
  
  
That image of Mino would visit me every now and then, in one of those nights when I dream of deaths. Death always wandered amongst the mixed up memories in which I recalled the times I buried myself in him. About the untidy and sweet kisses of silence that has planted upon our lips. We would stare into each other’s eyes - the fascination came from the trembling eyelashes that refused to close made our body contact cold as ice and our hot breath became bittersweet. The soft touch on his lips filled my inside with the voicelessness of agony, agony,  _agony_ , the agony that broke out of my chest from the pumping heartbeats; the night was condensed into a mass of shadow. And the hallucination of hope that came to visit smiled upon the entangled bodies, and perhaps the hole on my chest had broadened and deepened and from it, streams of crimson kept pouring out. Don’t cry, it said. I placed a kiss on the desperation’s lips that tasted like sorrow. We must have smiled and desired from each other the physical pains that were also ecstatic. His broad but delicate shoulders resembled the nature of all evil desires and sins and the taste of pains were dazzingly euphoric. My fingers slipping inside his messy hair were pained as if pressing on a thousand needles; my palm were pouringly sweaty and my restless body became sore from all the lust. Desires were the posionous salvation that pushed us to hell and somehow that was exactly where I have always wanted to come.  
  
  
We didn’t know what the forbidden fruit tasted like.  _Now it smelled of despair_.  
  
  
I would wake up in the middle of the night, went up to Mino’s room and stood there until the stench of decay in the air would fade. I could imagine him rolling on his bed inside the room, mumbling random things in his sleep; the innocent face that he used to have when his eyes closed has long turned into that permanent troubled frown but I always pretended not to realize.  
  
  
.  
.  
.  
  
  
Mino leaned toward me and lay on top of the messy blanket. His head gently touched the side of my thigh, and the simple body contact reminded me of how much I am going to miss it. I kept myself busy buttoning my shirt, but somehow, I couldn’t get them in place. My hands were trembling, and I turned around so that Mino wouldn’t see.  _He should have seen it_ , I thought. Please see it, and realized for once –  _I am not okay_.  
  
  
“You are not gonna ask me why I want us to stop doing this? Not even one question?” From under me, Mino’s gravely voice echoed the whole room and my fingers tripped on the button for the third time. I didn’t look at him, yet I knew he must have had that forced smile on his lips, the fake smile that always troubled me whenever I saw. Kid, you were too honest to make yourself lie. I always thought.  _What if today wasn’t a lie?_  I tried not to think about it, as I coldly answered him by another question:  
  
  
“Does it matter?”  
  
  
That was the last thing I remembered saying – everything else blurred into a series of gray motions – how he left the room with his shrunk shoulders moving up and down and his head held down onto his chest, the image of him carefully closing the door before leaving, the streetlight sneaked through the window dissolving the condensed darkness in which I was sitting. I stayed there for a couple more hours to tidy up the room, we used to do it together and that usually turned the room into a bigger mess that it was. But not after this time. I mindlessly put away all the pillows and blankets, leaving only the mattress on the bed frame. I locked all the windows, and after a second thought, I pulled out the battery from the clock hanging on my wall. The time in that room would stop forever, in that moment, of a late autumn night, three months before I would turn twenty three.  
  
 

* * *

  
  
  
  
When I finally left the apartment, it was almost midnight. I tried not to think about what to say and how to look at Mino from now on, but again, it was an unneccessary question to ask. We’re both professionals, _especially me_. Unlike Mino, I could fake a smile and people wouldn’t notice. Perhaps not even him. I tried to prolong my time as much as possible, because I didn’t want to come home at the same time with Mino. If I knew him at all, he too would try to avoid meeting me at the gate, so he would go to that bar, where we used to go together, and get shitfaced. I thought of going there, and didn’t even try to stop myself. I just wanted to make sure Mino wouldn’t get into any trouble –  _he totally would,_  given how upset he was just then. It was the last time anyway – I genuinely thought, as I found my way to the old bar far away from our boarding home. Let’s drink it away, for the last time,  _together_ , love.  
  
  
As expected, I saw Mino sitting at the corner of the bar with a drink in his hand. I carefully walked to the opposite corner where I could hide myself and still be able to observe him. As I sipped my [overpriced and bitter] beer, Mino has already finished his third drink. He kept ordering, and at one point I might have told the bartender to stop taking his orders. “Kid is upset, he just went through a bad break up,” I nonchalantly told the guy, “I’m his friend – just want to look out for a brother”. The bartender just raised his eyebrows hearing my story, but didn’t bother to ask as he received my tips. Over there, the troubled kid was directed to leave the bar by a security guy before he could get into an argument with the bartender who refused to serve him more alcohol. He furiously kicked the wall before leaving using the back door.  
  
  
I left cash at the bar and followed him. Mino was walking twenty feet in front of me, his broad and lonely back moving amongst the Saturday night crowd. He would sometimes stopped and stared around the streets, and I recognized those places – the bookstore across the street was where we sometimes went to buy his art supplies, that street vendor had my most favorite snacks, and there was the clothing store where he went to get his birthday gifts for me. I pulled the hoodie over my face and silently walked behind him. The way home became endless with Mino stopping every ten minutes to sit down on the side of the pavements, or to stand against a street pole. He would pull out his cigarettes and smoke a few, and though I wanted to, I couldn’t stop him anymore. If I must say something, it should have been something else, and not “you should stop smoking because it is bad for your health.” Imagine how upset he must be of I actually stepped up and tell him that? I scoffed at my own thoughts; a strain of bitterness slowly raised from within.  
  
 

* * *

  
  
  
  
It was way past midnight when he finally dragged himself through the gate and went inside our boarding home. I waited ten minutes before coming in. Taehyun was in the livingroom, all confused and anxious when he greeted me.  
  
  
  
I should have known that was only the beginning.  
  
  
  
./.


	9. PART IV: LONG LONG WAY

****

**PART IV**

**LONG LONG WAY**

**11\. the story we didn't tell**

 

 

 

“NOOOOO.” Jinwoo exclaimed as he held his chest. “He did not do that. Tell me he did not do that.”  
  
“Yes, he did. He smashed the mirror with his palms. I thought he lost his mind.” Seunghoon sighed as he threw himself onto his bed. Jinwoo stood up from the chair and joined him.  
  
“How long has it been going on like this?” Jinwoo asked worriedly. He stopped for a second, then continued. “You rarely told me anything, so I thought things were going fine.”  
  
“It’s complicated, you know.” Seunghoon cleared his throat as he reached for the water bottle on the floor.  
  
“Hey don’t give me that. If anyone, I know you, Hoonie.”  
  
“We just had a small fight is all.” Seunghoon took a big gulp of water and wiped his lips.  
  
“A small fight doesn’t make people go smashing shit and hurt themselves.” Jinwoo made a small ‘tsk’ as he asked. “You haven’t told me everything, haven’t you?”  
  
Seunghoon didn’t answer. He put a blanket to cover his legs then lay down. Jinwoo moved closer to the bed header and lay his back against the wall. He kept looking at Seunghoon, waiting for the younger one to speak up. But Seunghoon insisted on staying quiet. Just by looking, Jinwoo knew that the other’s mind must have been racing to a thousand places right now, and he respectfully waited. After a while, he heavily sighed as his hand reached out to tenderly caress Seunghoon’s forehead.  
  
“You are not gonna speak at all, are you?”  
  
“There is rather nothing to really talk about.” Seunghoon mumbled; he avoided looking at the beautiful face that was etched with wariness. Jinwoo knew him too well to let it fly, but he might understand that this is not something Seunghoon would like to discuss. He closed his eyes to feel Jinwoo’s slender fingers playing with his hair. “That feels nice.” He almost whispered but managed to stop himself.  
  
“It feels nice, isn’t it?” Jinhoon’s soft voice startled Seunghoon. “You always like this.”  
  
“Yeah…” Suddenly Seunghoon felt uncomfortable. He thought of some ways to get out of the situation without being rude. Jinwoo noticed his uneasiness and slightly chuckled. He pulled his hand away and kicked back. Seunghoon didn’t say anything, yet he gave Jinwoo a guilty look. Jinwoo didn’t return his gaze. He smiled and looked afar instead:  
  
“ Hoonie, do you still remember what happened between us?”  
  
After a moment of reconsidering, Seunghoon reluctantly replied:  
  
“Of course I do.” Jinwoo turned to look at him as he smiled even more brightly. Somehow it pained Seunghoon to see that. He must have forgotten the way Jinwoo always smiled at him,  _despite everything._  
  
“Mm. I thought you forgot.”  
  
“Why do you say that, hyung?”  
  
Jinwoo withdrew his smile. His facial expression became hardened. It was time Jinwoo dropped his act – and Seunghoon knew where the conversation was going. He swallowed with difficulty as he waited for Jinwoo to say the words. Those words that only Jinwoo would be able to say to him and he would have to take it. In the end, it was him who started everything.  
  
  
* * *  
  
  
Kim Jinwoo was twenty one when he first met twenty-year-old Lee Seunghoon. He has heard of Lee Seunghoon before, the golden boy of the famous audition program, Kpop Star. He has spared his time during the busy training sessions to follow up on the show to watch the boy from Busan weeks by weeks showing his unimaginable talent and passion climbing to the top. He was almost jealous at the fact that Lee Seunghoon, who seemed to have no experiences in singing or rapping, was able to get through them weekly competitions by his mere presence on the stage. But on the episode Seunghoon was eliminated, Jinwoo found himself crying along with the stranger he had never met – the tears streaming down on that face seemed somewhat familiar. At one point of his life, he had cried like that, so genuinely, so heartbreakingly, so  _painfully_  – the taste of a dream that was crushed when it was so close. An expected disappointment, a forseen loss, was what it was. That boy went through criticism after criticism, managed to do his job while smiling, but in those eyes, there was this hole of darkness and wounded gaze that perhaps not many people could see. But in the end, no matter what he did, it still wasn’t enough. He was expected to leave by so many people, and it was time he did. Lee Seunghoon wasn’t crying because he lost. He cried because he couldn’t prove those people wrong. Perhaps there were not many people who would get it.  
  
But the ones who have felt that way before, would understand. People like Kim Jinwoo, would totally get it. What was more, he  _felt_  it so deeply, so heavily on his heart, that he skipped practicing that day and spent his whole afternoon crying in the bathroom of the practicing studio. When Kang Seungyoon found him, he was almost passing out on the floor. Jinwoo silently wiped what was left of his tears from his reddened eyes and told Seungyoon he was homesick. Seungyoon looked at him with concerns and offered to take him out for a meal, but he politely declined. “I want to stay in to practice tonigh,” he had said. “I haven’t practiced at all today.” Seungyoon nodded and later that night, he brought Jinwoo dinner and hot cacao. Jinwoo gratefully took it from Seungyoon. He ate his meal in the dark while crying.  
  
The next day, and the day after that, Jinwoo practiced so dilligently without even sleeping. Everyone was looking at him strangely, but they didn’t say anything. As trainees, whatelse were you supposed to do – he was the oldest amongst the kids. And the  _least_ talented, as one might never say to his face, but he knew. He knew because he could never join any rap battle, dance battle, and when Seungyoon and Taehyun played to each other their composed songs on the guitar, he would silently retreat to the recording room and rehearse his part for the thousand time. It was always lacking something.  _He_ was always lacking something. But he knew, despite everything, his dream was  _not_.  
  
A few months later, Jinwoo showed up at the studio to find the boy that he was secretly obsessed about was coming to be a part of the team. Kim Jinwoo was stunned at the sight of the strange-yet-familiar boy who was sitting in a corner and politely answering people’s question about the show he was in. He wanted to naturally walk next to him, say hello or ask questions like people did. But what could he actually ask, when the only thing that was in his mind was, ‘was your heart finally mended, are you okay now, Lee Seunghoon?” That question shouldn’t be asked by someone you never met. So he kept his distance and only slightly nodded at the boy, then took his brief leave to go practice.  
  
It was almost two weeks until they had the first proper greeting. It was Seunghoon who came up to him and offered him a bottle of water when he couldn’t find one. Jinwoo awkwardly said thanks and received the bottle from Seunghoon’s hand, as the younger guy casually spoke:  
  
“We’ve met before, but I don’t think we have ever spoken to each other. I’m Lee Seunghoon, 20 year old. You’re Kim Jinwoo-hyung, right? The other boys said you are the oldest.”  
  
“Ye..yeah.” Jinwoo swallowed and wiped his lips before answering. “I’m older than you by a year and a half.”  
  
“That was… rather specific.” Seunghoon exclaimed.  
  
“Oh…” Jinwoo regretted right away. “Well I know you were born in January 1992, and I was born in August the previous year.” He was secretly glad that Seunghoon only raised his eyebrows and not asking him why he would know his birthday.  
  
“Dude, that means you’re only five months older than I am.” Seunghoon counted on his fingers then laughed aloud. “If you were born in January and I was born in August, that would be a year and a half.”  
  
“You’re right…” Jinwoo thought for a while, then laughed along, “How could I be so stupid. That was basic math.”  
  
“Dude if it’s the math that even I can do, that shit is elementary level.” Seunghoon casually tapped Jinwoo on his shoulders and Jinwoo unconsciously smiled at the gesture.  
  
“Hey, have you ever played ‘are you more intelligent than a fifth grader’? Don’t ever underestimate elementary level – that thing was hard.” Jinwoo protested. He usually didn’t really know how to talk to a person he just met – but to be fair, Seunghoon wasn’t a  _total_  stranger. At least to him, he wasn’t.  
  
“Or maybe you’re just not that smart, mm?” Seunghoon looked at him with mischief in his eyes. Anyone could have taken this joke as a mean attack, but somehow, Jinwoo knew right away, that was Seunghoon’s way of making friends. So he smiled at Seunghoon:  
  
“Congrats on solving an elementary math problem then. You must be proud.”  
  
The younger boy looked surprised at his comeback. He laughed even louder:  
  
“Oh wow that was good. I thought guys with a pretty face like you would be nicer.”  
  
Jinwoo shrugged. He still didn’t know where that comeback came from, but it seemed like by talking to this guy right here, all the things he didn’t know he had would eventually come out.  
  
“According to that logic, you’re a meanie because?”  
  
“Ouch. Ya, you don’t go there, not to a stranger you just met.” He paused, then smiled at Jinwoo brightly. It was the first time Jinwoo had ever seen a smile that bright. He didn’t know, at the time, that he wouldn’t get to see this smile as much as he thought. “I’d take it as we can be close friends who say shit to each other. You’re only five months older than I am anyway.”  
  
“You still gotta call me hyung.”  
  
“Wooya, that’s what I would call you.”  
  
“Oh hell no.”  
  
“Wooyaaaaa~”  
  
  
* * *  
  
  
“Why do you say that, hyung?” Seunghoon asked, and he patiently waited for Jinwoo to tell it like it is. Jinwoo, with his serious yet gentle look, slowly replied:  
  
“Because you haven’t changed at all.”  
  
Seunghoon stayed silent at Jinwoo’s transparent answer. Jinwoo sat closer to him and held his hands. This time, Seunghoon didn’t try to get away.  
  
“Remember what you told me that day when you said you didn’t want to hurt me?”  
  
Seunghoon bited his lips:  
  
“Well, I never did.”  
  
“So that you could go on and hurt other people?” Jinwoo caressed his hand; his beautiful eyes were shadowed under the soft eyelashes. Seunghoon exhaled as he held the older one’s hands to stop him. Jinwoo looked up and waited for him to answer.  
  
“I didn’t want any of this to happen. I didn’t expect the boy to, you know, hurt himself because of me.” Seunghoon finally said as he removed Jinwoo’s hands from his. The deer-eyed man didn’t say anything while his hands were left hanging onto nothing. He tugged his hair under his ear as he let out an unusual sarcastic laugh.  
  
“Oh but you did, Lee Seunghoon. You did.” He paused for one second. “Because it seemed to me that you were using the boy.”  
  
“Hey, let’s not talk about the kid. This is about you and me.”  
  
“No, it’s all about you. It has always been about you.”  
  
“Hyung…”  
  
“Did you or did you not make a move on Mino the same day you left me at that coffeeshop?”  
  
Seunghoon stopped talking. In front of him, Jinwoo, the five-month-older guy who was sticking with him through all this time, looked at him with the most wounded eyes that he remembered. Seunghoon let out a long exhale. Memories have its way of working – our subconsciousness always omit a few details too many and before you know, you only remember the favorite version of what happened. Most of the time, things being left out are always the most important.  
  
  
* * *  
  
  
Before Jinwoo even realized, Seunghoon and him have already become friends. At first, Jinwoo wasn’t sure if he would be able to keep up with his seemingly talkative new friend. But he needed not to worry so, because he soon realized – or re-realized, to be exact, that much of Seunghoon’s cheerful outlook was only the tip of the iceberg. His new dongseng, who refused to call him hyung, would barely talk at all when the attention was not on him. But Jinwoo knew, because when nobody was paying attention, he did. And he would silently clench his fist at the sight of Seunghoon hiding in a corner with his eyes down and shoulders drooped, as if the whole heaviness of the world was on him. For the first few times, Jinwoo would only stare. Until one day their eyes met – and for one second, thousands of words were exchanged during that blink of an eye.  
  
Perhaps it was the best thing that ever happened. Because that was how Jinwoo and Seunghoon  _really_ became close.  
  
Perhaps it was the worst thing that ever happened. Because that was how Jinwoo realized maybe friendship wasn’t  _exactly_ what he wanted. But Seunghoon has carefully crafted a wall around him, to stop anyone from entering. Not even Jinwoo. There was a door somewhere, but Jinwoo couldn’t find the key. Seunghoon would look at him many times with the eyes that were almost telling him “no”. No to what, Jinwoo wouldn’t ask. He felt much safer wandering around that wall, waiting for one day the door would magically crack open. It never did.  
  
The one time it did, Jinwoo ruined everything.  
  
When Seunghoon hastily got up from his chair and walked out of the door in a hurry, Jinwoo was left wondering what he did wrong. When Seunghoon and him first got to this coffeeshop, everything was fine. They were having a joyful conversation, and they both laughed so much their stomach hurt. Seunghoon ordered a seasonal peppermint mocha – they always had that flavor during this time of the year. From early December, to celebrate Christmas, but the special drinks were served well until late January due to popular demands. Jinwoo got a black coffee and Seunghoon raised his eyebrows while scoffing under his breath – “so pretentious, trying hard to be cool” – to which Jinwoo just smiled and motioned his hand to dismiss. Seunghoon didn’t know Jinwoo wasn’t inclined to sleep much anyway.  
  
When the conversation turned into gossip – the dirty little secret that both of them shared – they loved talking about other trainees, male and female alike, with the confidence that the other one wouldn’t sell them out, things started to get weird. If Jinwoo had known what he knew now, he woudn’t have talked about Mino with Seunghoon. Destiny, too, has its way of working things out. Perhaps he had always meant to talk about Mino – the newcomer with extraordinary talent and quite a biography that was well liked amongst all – on that day, so that the future as he knew of now could build its stages. Jinwoo made a mistake - which was to mention Mino and his feelings to Seunghoon at the same time. He never realized how big of a mistake it was, until a few weeks later when he saw, from his window, Seunghoon and Mino holding hands as they walking home from the store.  
  
But he didn’t know about any of this on that day. He only knew that Seunghoon had left him there, right after the atmostphere became heavy, because Jinwoo had slipped his tongue and said to Seunghoon:  
  
“I wondered if Mino also felt the way I do about you.”  
  
Now thinking about that, this neutral sentence shouldn’t have intrigued such a reaction from Seunghoon, as he looked at Jinwoo at once and asked:  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
The next thing he knew, Jinwoo was left alone in that coffee shop, with a messy memory of what just took place. Seunghoon saying something like, “I didn’t want to hurt you, sorry I didn’t realize, but.” Jinwoo finished his cold, bitter, black coffee in silence.  
  
  
* * *  
  
  
“Hyung, we would never have worked out.” Seunghoon’s voice sounded almost like a plead. He looked down onto the bed to avoid Jinwoo’s gaze.  
  
“That you’re right.” Jinwoo voicelessly spoke. “Because you don’t love yourself.” Stopped for a moment, he continued. “I could have been the one to love you, I could have.”  
  
“Don’t say that.” Seunghoon shooked his head, but Jinwoo went on as if he didn’t see it.  
  
“It didn’t matter because you never let me. And I made peace with that.”  
  
“I’m not gonna say anything stupid.”  
  
“But you are stupid, you see.” Jinwoo kept talking. His voice became harderned and he spoke with such difficulties. It wasn’t hard to hear the words choking inside his throat. “I love you, Seunghoonie. No, as a brother, a friend, whatever. You’re right, we could never have worked out and I made peace with that. You’re too toxic even for yourself and I couldn’t help you. I thought you going with Mino would change something.”  
  
“Wooya…”  
  
“Fucking stop calling me that.” Jinwoo suddenly yelled at Seunghoon that made him shut up instantly. Then Jinwoo started to cry. “Hoonie you can be happy. I wanted you to be happy. It broke my heart to know that I’m not the one you can be happy with – and it’s alright. But now you’re telling me you fucking pulled a rebound on Mino? You didn’t even love me. What was the damn reason to do so?”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
“I do. Because you loved the kid. You always have. Since the first day you saw him. You left me for him. Hell, you left  _us_ for him. And don’t tell me otherwise because I knew you. I know you.”  
  
“You don’t know me, Wooya. Not all of me.” Seunghoon heavily said. His heart was swollen with guilt and he couldn’t stand Jinwoo crying right in front of him. Jinwoo never cried in front of him, no matter how hard things were. Of perhaps, finally he realized, that the older guy has always been crying to himself without letting him know. Jinwoo hid his face in his palm to avoid Seunghoon who was reaching out trying to wipe his tears.  
  
“God, and I thought you looked so bright for a while when you started seeing Mino. What happened, Hoonie?”  
  
“Me. Wooya, me. That’s what happened. That’s what happened to you. That’s what happened to Mino. And I don’t fucking know who else.” Seunghoon breathed heavily. “And I’m sorry for abruptly leaving us but I just couldn’t let myself ruin you. You don’t deserve it. I respected and loved you too much. You were the best thing that happened to me.”  
  
Jinwoo let out a small laugh while sobbing:  
  
“For some reasons I can’t say the same.” He stopped for a moment trying to collect himself. “But I’m okay. Look, Hoonie, stop projecting your world upon everyone, you might think you’re the deviant, the unfit. But we all have monsters inside. I could have taken yours – but it doesn’t matter. You don’t want me to be the one to fix you.”  
  
Jinwoo’s words got him stuttered.  
  
“But you already knew it.”  
  
“Look, Wooya,” Seunghoon inhaled sharply and said, “I’m messed up. Have always been. It was just easier to be in the dark. You’re the brightest thing in my life, and I don’t want to taint you. You thought I didn’t want you – I didn’t know that I could…”  
  
“Hoonie,” Jinwoo gently cut him off, “let’s just agree that we didn’t love each other like that. Don’t play that game, I’m not that kid, you won’t wreck me the way you do him.”  
  
“But I did.”  
  
“So you thought. Was that why you ran into him, to avoid dealing with the mess you made with me?” Jinwoo picked a tissue from the box and wiped his eyes. His soft voice echoed in the small room, so calmly it was almost like he was talking to himself.  
  
“Was I not the one staying with you every step of the way and support you in every way that I can?”  
  
“Seunghoon, you didn’t wreck me. You let me go, and it was the best thing that you could do at that time. I understood.”  
  
“I just need you to find where your heart is at. You didn’t play with Mino’s heart, love.”  
  
Seunghoon looked down onto his hands that had unconsciously gripped into tight fists.  
  
  
  
  
  
“You were playing with yours.”  
  
  
  
  
 _What in the world would be harder than hearing the truth that you already knew but still couldn’t seem to believe?_  
  
  
  
./.


	10. PART IV: LONG LONG WAY

**PART IV**

**LONG LONG WAY**

**12\. instant crush**

 

I was very, very young when I started rapping. My father is a DJ, and so I emerged myself with all the records that he specifically told me not to touch, “not until you are eighteen”. Being a child as I was, the only reason I could have imagined was that my father didn’t want to share his treasures with me. And I was right, those records were such treasures. I spent hours listening to the language I didn’t understand, the thick and heavy bass that made my heart go numb, the flow of a foreign language that sticked to each other in the most mesmerizing rhythm and rhymes. Before I knew, I started to imitate the way they sounded, with little to no understanding of the meanings.

 

My parents would only laughed when I performed such songs to them; my father being the always missing person that he was during our dinners would pat my head and tell me not to perform it elsewhere, since the words I just spurred out of my mouth weren’t all that polite. The first English word I learned turned out to be a curse word that was proven helpful in many other circumstances that I’d encountered later on in life.

 

Now thinking back, it was almost a lifetime ago when I first hung out with the underground crew and attended performances in those small venues of bars and pubs. I was underage, but always managed to sneak in with the help of the hyungs. I wasn’t inclined to perform at first, not until I was eighteen and could properly get in using my real ID. My life as a rapper officially started there. However, it certainly didn’t end there; my path led me to another world, more glamorous, perhaps, but also darker and much brutal. And here I used to think nothing can get darker than a crooked bar with broken backdoors where all the kids got drunk and smoke weed talking shit, from hookup fantasies to broken education system and politics. Life never failed to prove you wrong, one step astray and you would find yourself walking on thorns in a path to a destination that you had no idea.

 

After failing to debut the first time and to make a name for myself the second time, here I was again, in the front door to YG building, hoping to be inside one day. And in the future, I would – I was just not sure how long it would take and how far I had to go at that time. The length I would go for a secured future, sadly, was much further than I’d expect. I inhaled deeply before opening the door and walk straight to the reception table where I would be told to wait at the hall until my name is called. “Don’t wander too far, in case the director wants to see you right away,” the receptionist lady would say, “but you can take a look around.” I thought about it, but decided not to. If I get in, this sightseeing tour would be unnecessary, but if I don’t, it would only be just another story to tell. And I honestly didn’t need more stories to tell. I needed one to live. So I sit down quietly at the waiting area, constantly swiping my phone screen and jumping from tracks to tracks. I wondered is this would be similar to the ‘job interview’ I had with my previous company. But this is YG, things are bound to be different. I ended up listening to one of my favorite artists that I sampled from a lot; the familiar lyrics and rhythm helped me calm my nerves to a certain extent.

 

_‘I’m just doin’ what I gotta do,_  
Flyer than the rest of them  
Still got my nikes on’

 

I quickly got excited and started to shake my head along with the heavy beats, not realizing that there was a guy across the hall in one of those closed doors looking at every of my movements. The day I learned who it was, indeed, was the day I understood how cruel a joke of fate could be. Whoever he was, I didn’t learn his name at that time, was a tall guy around my age. His face was shadowed under the snapback so I couldn’t see clearly, and as I would be told, he belongs to a group of trainees which “you might join if you pass the audition.” When I was called into the office and caught his eyes, there was something so strange about the way he looked at me that I never fully understood. Not even now. We exchanged glance for a split of second before I turned around, and without looking back, for some reasons, I felt that he had not broken his glare. The back of my neck felt like it was burning, but I shook it off quickly as I entered the room at the end of the hall. I almost constantly forgot this fast encounter, as it never occur to me that there would be one day when the mere thought of this moment would be such a humble and bitter experience.  
 

 

* * *

 

 

I was admitted after the director told me how satisfied he was with my skill, and that ‘I would very well fit in with the existing group they already formed.’ I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it – after all, I understood so well how hard it must be to adapt to a team that had been practicing with each other – and how hostile they might be toward a new guy who didn’t have to go through years of painful training but could claim a spot. With such heavy thoughts in my head, I pulled the door to the studio, rehearsing in my head the introduction that would sound lame no matter how I tried to revise. I have seen pictures of the guys and heard one or two things about them. They were lacking a main rapper position, and I would fill in that spot. But there was a rapper in the band already, who came from one of those survival reality TV shows that I abhorred. But I too, shall stop having opinions about stuff, because they always ended up what I had to go through. What would I feel though, I thought to myself, if I was a rapper in a band that was said to ‘lack a main rapper.’ My speculation was that, whoever that guy was, he is not gonna like me. Along with the rest of the guys who have been training at YG for years. There was that famous guy Kang Seungyoon, whom I known as a rocker. There were those other trainess, Nam Taehyun and Kim Jinwoo, whose looks were telling me that we would have a very, very difficult time getting along.

His name is Lee Seunghoon. Twenty year old, almost turning twenty-one. The first time I met him, I was so impressed with the effortless humorous attitude that he had. When I walked into the practicing room, he was the first one to greet me while the rest was just looking up and down as they mumbled their hellos. A little too warm for a welcome, I hid my scoff as I reached my hand out, but Lee Seunghoon casually grabbed my hand and turned it into a pound hug. He slightly tapped on my back as he cheerfully said:

“Hello there, ain’t you a macho one. Look at how built and tanned you are.”

I was taken aback at his comment, but the tense air in the room was loosening thanks to that, as I heard the other guys laughing:

“Hyung, stop being so thirsty. Give the guy a break, Jesus.”

“I’m just saying, Look at all your skinny asses, we need some real men here to seduce the lady fans.” Seunghoon let go of me and joined the group. The guy with long hair, Nam Taehyun, elbowed him jokingly, “hyung I’m not that skinny, it is just my deceptive pretty face.” The other guy, who was also dazzingly pretty, laughed out loud at his remark.

“Maknae please, you’re not skinny but you’re not muscular either. You still haven’t gotten rid of them baby fat.”

Things instantly became chaotic, as the guys seemed to forget that I was in the room making my introduction. While I was awkwardly standing there, Kang Seungyoon was the second to extend his arm to shake my hand. After that, Kim Jinwoo took my hand with both hands, and Nam Taehyun nodded at me. I would have thought he was the oldest amongst the group with that attitude, but I learned quickly that he was just a spoilt maknae who had a reputation of getting things the way he wanted. The one you should look out for. I never quite understood why, it seemed like the younger guy was not the type. At least to me. But that was another story.

And there he was, Lee Seunghoon, who retreated as soon as he broke the tension in the room to let me in. I could easily have forgotten that he was the first one to welcome me, because he would stop talking all along and just silently sat at the corner of the room with his earphones on, only responding when others called for him. Jinwoo was sitting closely to him; they would sometimes exchange some whispers and laughs. Quite a clique you got there, buddy, I thought. For some reasons, that scene bothered me more than it should. But I was occupied with the constant chit-chat of Seungyoon who would ask me to play and perform some of my mixtapes. The first meeting ended well. I had some errands to run, so I excused myself after receiving the schedules from the group. As I was leaving the room, I felt that gaze again, the same feeling that I had on that day when I first came to audition. But as always, I shook it off and abruptly left without thinking much. I should have known that I was only thinking I did.

  
Because soon enough, that gaze became _mine_.

 

 

* * *

There was something strange about Lee Seunghoon. Everyone who knows him would agree with that. The guy doesn’t have any vocal skills, as other trainees in the company sometimes mentioned in their gossiping sessions – a comment that somehow got me quite unreasonably upset, given how little I knew about Seunghoon. But when it came to dancing, he would be at the level of the paid choreographers that the company hired to train us. Seunghoon was also the guy who made a big presence in the room whenever he decided to, and disappeared into the corner just as quickly to the point people easily forgot he was even there. There were instances where people would talk in front of him without realizing, but Seunghoon never said anything. I kept the urges to defend him to myself the first few times, as I took note in my mind that this is a competitive place. Mentally, emotionally, and physically. People around you could be your band mate or could be the worst enemies – there’s no need to stand up for anybody if you are not sure which one they are going to be.

 

The one time I couldn’t help it but to mention that ‘making it to top 4 of that reality TV show despite having any talents is a goal to strive for,’ people stopped talking instantly. From the corner of the room, Seunghoon would nod at me, with his earphones on and everything. I then learned that either he had a sixth sense or that he never actually listened to any music even when he appeared so. It was just a way he used to excuse having to deal with people. I was expecting to get a proper thank you from him for what I did, but I never got any. I wasn’t the type to be upset about such thing – but for some reasons, I did.

 

I did for quite a bit, while trying to confront myself about why I would have such feelings, Until a few days later when Seunghoon came up to me and asked me to help him with his rap. “I’m not good with pronunciation and accent, everyone knows that.” He calmly said. “So thank you for standing up for me, but they weren’t quite wrong.”

 

“That was such shitty though,” I exclaimed. “You were right there in the room. They could have been nicer about it.”

 

Seunghoon smiled. His eyes turned into a crescent moon shape, and I wonder why that would make such an impact on me. “They were being nice for talking in front of me, Minho.” He slightly smirked. “When people decided to talk behind your back, that’s when they stop being your friends.”

 

“So,” He simply said again, “thanks for standing up for me. But would you help me to improve my skill?”

 

When his earnest eyes look at me as he tenderly spoke, I started to realize why I was having such a hard time with him around. I, too, should stop brushing off the goosebumps I always had whenever Lee Seunghoon was talking to me.

 

“You know,” I said to Seunghoon as I reluctantly wrapped my arm around his shoulders as we headed to the studio (and the guy was just as reluctant to put his arm around my lower back), “there was one song that always gave me the strength to go through all the shittiness life got to offer.”

“Which is?” He asked.

“I gotta do what I gotta do, flyer than the rest of them, still got my nikes on.” I rapped to him the very song that I was listening to the first time – the real first time I met him. Seunghoon turned to look me in the eyes and slightly chuckled.

“Funny you said that.” He pointed at our feet. “We both have our nikes on. We too shall fly higher than the rest of them.”

For from that point on, I knew that this feeling, whatever it was, is only going to get worse.

 

 

 

./.


	11. otherwise

**PART IV**

**LONG LONG WAY**

**13\. otherwise**

** **

 

“So, Song Minho.” Seungyoon suddenly said in the middle of tuning his guitar. I barely looked away from the screen of my ipad, waiting for him to continue his thought. But Seungyoon left his sentence unfinished, and I glared at him:

“And?”

“Nothing.” Seungyoon leaned closer to listen to the sounds of the strings. “I am just curious as to what you thought of him.”

“There’s not much.” I shrugged. Except I observed him well; boy was good looking and tall, built and tanned, his voice was coarse and deep. In short, he looked like…

“A lot of trouble.” Seungyoon finished my thought as he slammed on the guitar one last time before putting it aside to grab the music chords and lyrics. “That’s what he looks like. Just my humble opinion.”

“You sound challenged.” I returned to my ipad and switched between apps. “Not very into what he’s got, do you?”

“I’m sure he’s talented alright.” Seungyoon put the paper next to his laps and started playing his guitar. “Just not sure bout what he’s got to offer to our group.”

“I listened to his mixtapes. They were cool.” I scratched the tip of my nose and shrugged again. “Not my usual type of music though, honest.”

“That’s the point, Taehyunie.” Seungyoon said without looking up. “We are not Hiphop. Especially you and me. You think we’re gonna get along okay?”

“What’s the point of asking me? You should probably ask whoever brought that dude in. In this case, lord YG aka our almighty boss.” I pulled out my earphones and mumbled before putting them on. Seungyoon caught my hand fastly before I even got to do that simple thing. “Not so fast,” he said. “I’m still talking.” “When else do you not do that?” I sighed to myself and quickly responded before he heard my complaint. “Okay, talk away.”

“Do you think it’s going to change the dynamic in our group?” Seungyoon looked at me, surprisingly calm, but his facial expression said something else.

“Well, if I’m allowed to be honest…” I cleared my throat, looked around to make sure there is no one else in the practicing room but us, then low down my voice. “Do you think we got a group?” Seungyoon raised one of his eyebrows at my statement. “Just my personal feeling, but we have you, pop-rock all the way, then me, conventional gayo stuff. The other two, well, god knows they’re warm and kind people, but they are not exactly what I would categorize as song-writer singers. You know what I mean?”

Seungyoon looked elsewhere in the room; his eyes remained fixed at an uncertain spot. “You’ve got a point. See, this is why I think the Song Minho guy can be a hit or a miss. He can either put a good balance into the group and pull us all together, or he’ll be the next extreme thing that points out the fact that our group is such a mess.”

“I know what you’re talking about. He composes too. Not my, or your type of music, but I think we can at least work with him professional-wise.”

In the beginning, I truly believed that, very strongly. I have good impression of Minho,  _great_  even. I mean, have you seen his physique. The only thing I didn’t expect was that the impression about how a person looks can never be accounted for who they are. Especially when much of what came to my perception of Minho was that, well, you see, he’s the entire definition of hotness. Great built, tall, youthful good-looking facial feature with a tad of well-spread masculinity, strong eyebrows and defined jawline, not to mention, his very,  _very_  kind heart.

Later on, I learned fairly quickly that his kindness was not unconditional toward everybody. Nor does it distribute evenly toward everyone, myself included.

.

.

.

 

 “That was such a shitty move though,” I heard Minho’s voice from afar when Seungyoon and I were making our entrance into the building. “You were right there in the room. They could have been nicer about it.” I slowed down and shushed at Seungyoon before he walked into the door. He looked at me dazedly as I whispered: “It’s the dancer and the rapper. They are exiting the practice room.” Seungyoon raised his eyebrows as a way to tell me that this action of mine looked ridiculous, but I decided to ignore him. The voices were getting closer, and I pulled Seungyoon into a corner to let them pass through.

“They were being nice for talking in front of me, Minho.” I heard Seunghoon’s voice this time. Seungyoon, from right behind me, whispered: “What are they talking about?” I whispered back with my eyes glued at the two older guys, not realizing that Seungyoon was  _this_ close to me; his lips were uncomfortably right next to my ears. That wasn’t one bit of my worry at the time, to be very honest. “I don’t know. I think the mean trainees are pulling shit on Seunghoon about his lack of training.” Seungyoon slightly laughed. “You mean us two?” “C’mon rocker, we are not that mean. We state the fact without being an asshole about it, and we never raised the beef in front of him.” I could feel Seungyoon’s body’s movement when he shrugged and chuckled. “If that makes you feel better, sure.”

Just then, I heard the footstep closer to where we were standing. I pushed Seungyoon back until we both hit the wall and shushed at him again. Seunghoon’s voice echoed in the hall way, “When people decided to talk behind your back, that’s when they stop being your friends.” Seungyoon quickly covered his laugh as I felt my ears getting red. “Shut it rocker.”

After the two older guys were gone, we stepped out of the hiding spot and made our way to the practice room. I still tried to listen to the conversation, by then the voices has become unintelligible sounds.

“If I haven’t known you for quite a while, Nammie,” Seungyoon gently scoffed as he watched me continuing to look at Mino and Seunghoon as they proceeded to the end of the hall, “I would think you got your eyes on one of the hyungs.” I snapped back at once without breaking my eyes from them. “Shut it, rocker. I just witnessed an interesting incident is all.”

“You are for sure having other thoughts than that.” Seungyoon’s raised  his twinkling eyes at me while I was busy dismissing his teasing. “Otherwise…”

“What now, rocker?” I said without returning his gaze.

“Nothing.” He turned away and opened the door. “Good news is that we shouldn’t be discussing nor having other thoughts about our bandmates behind their back. It is a little mean to think that they cannot overcome or improve their limits now.”

“That’s not really the point, rocker.”

“No it ain’t.”  _But it’s better than what both of us are thinking right now, Nammie._ Seungyoon’s gazed stopped on me once again a second too long, as he sat down on the chair and laid his guitar on top of the table. I turned my head away from the duo’s direction and followed Seungyoon into the room. It is going to be another long, tiring day today, I thought, and I can’t afford to be distracted. I have spent way too many years in this basement, I need to debut – we need to work shit out and debut as soon as possible. Now that we have five members, hopefully things will move along smoother.

Or at least, that’s what I thought I had told myself at the moment. (Later on, the other trainees told me to not mess with either Minho or Seunghoon because they’re like an item now. They said, when they just jokingly talked about how Seunghoon sometimes lack the understanding of music chords, but Minho got really mad and told them off. The story somehow soothed me, since I, well, never actually thought of anyone as lacking. Seungyoon then told me that not being a composing singer is just the polite version of it. I proceeded to tell him off.)

* * *

The first time Minho raised my voice at me was when we were having a discussion about song choices for the W.I.N competition. It was already shitty as is, the situation, where we were forced to participate in a nonsensical survival reality TV show against the younger trainees. Minho all of a sudden became the leader of our messy group – Seungyoon and I had exchanged looks at each other, but we kind of have expected this. Amongst the senior trainees in the group, none of us are HipHop – the only genre that the company is comfortable with, except for Seunghoon. But he is, well, not exposed to a lot of thing, especially in the music production process. I wasn’t against Minho being a leader at first, he looked the part. But dude wasn’t working well under lots of pressure, I observed. And it showed, because he would turn up with the songs that potentially have nothing to do with any of the band members as song choices. Ah, how we messed up the first few rounds.

“How about you bring up a better idea then, if you hate my song choices so much?” When I disagreed with the song he chose for the round, Minho looked at me with irritation and raised his voice. I froze at the confrontation and instantly left the room without forgetting to slam the door really hard. I walked out of the building so quickly, no one was really able to react. I didn’t remember what I was thinking at the time – different opinions have never been an issue for me. I’m a Taurus, I do my own thing alright – but it doesn’t mean I couldn’t live if someone else has a different idea. I don’t back down either – I fight for my opinion.

Now thinking back, his response wasn’t too much, he still used formal language. I didn’t quite understand my reaction at the time – I for sure got into bigger fights and arguments with others, but not for silly reasons like that. There was that one time Seungyoon told me that I need to work on my vocal cord and that my singing style was cheesy and old-fashioned. I broke all hell that day – but I wasn’t feeling  _attacked_  – he was just trying to help. But when Song Minho, great-looking, (supposedly) kind, and (proven) righteous Song Mino looked at me with those combat eyes and spoke to me in that cold, mocking voice, something like a flaming anger arose within me. I was so, so mad that if I hadn’t left, I would have knocked something down (and logistically, I could afford nothing in that room). Where is your kindness now? I bitterly thought as I made my way all the way to the back alley of the building. Could easily tell somebody off, couldn’t he? My whole body was almost shaking, but I told myself that it was just me, being under too much pressure because I, too, could not afford to lose this opportunity to debut.

It has to be the pressure as to why I was feeling  _that_  hurt.  _Otherwise_ ….


	12. PART V: DYSJUNCTURE

** **

**PART IV**

**DYSJUNCTURE**

**14\. reasons we stayed**

 

 

“You know, big boy.” Mino looked up when he heard Seungyoon’s voice. It was way past midnight and they still lock themselves at the studio working on the third album that god-knows-when-will-be-finished-much-less-released. “People think things got better if you just don’t give a fuck about it. It doesn’t work that way.” He looked puzzled at the leader’s statement.

 

“What do you mean, leader?”

 

“Just think about it for a second.” From the couch across the room, Seungyoon shrugged and reached out to grab the water bottle. He twisted the cap open and downed half the bottle. Mino stared at the younger man for a bit; he slowly spoke in an uncertain way: “I’m not quite sure what you’re talking about. Our work, you mean? The fact that we merely got to produce our 3rd album and this is the 3rd year we’re active as a band?”

 

“Well, we got paid to give a fuck about that…” Seungyoon laughed out loud, then sighed loudly. “I’m talking about other stuff that got your personal life all messed up. It’s, well, affecting everybody.”

 

“Like what…” Mino tilted his head in doubt, then suddenly opened his eyes widely, staring at  Seungyoon, who slowly rolled his eyes at the oblivious rapper. “Yeah. That.” Mino shut his mouth tightly as he wondered to himself who Seungyoon was talking about. That thought made him slightly scoff. What an asshole he is, indeed, to have to wonder  _which_  scandalous relationship is being discovered.

 

“Well, leader.” He cleared his throat before looking at the guy again, this time with colder eyes. “I don’t know what you imply but I can hold my ground well.”

 

“You sure can.” Seungyoon laughed heartily. “I have no doubt about it whatsoever.” His eyes turned icy as the smile froze on his lips. “But you’re not just holding your ground. You stepped on mine in this matter, big boy.”

 

“Really, if you can just get to the damn point, I would fucking appreciate it, Yoonie.” Mino exhaled deeply as he broke eye contact. He could feel the tension in the room; it’s no use fighting with Seungyoon about a mysterious cause that he wasn’t even sure if he was in the right. “What do you want me to give a fuck about?”

 

“Your feelings.” Seungyoon’s kept the answer short and sweet. “Your messy ass feelings are fucking up your life, and I need you to get a hold of yourself.”

 

“What the actual fuck are you talking about, for real, Kang Seungyoon.” Mino angrily glared at his band mate one more time. He didn’t know what kind of answer Seungyoon would give – the question was, however,  _who_  would Mino rather have Seungyoon know as the one involved with him, Seunghoon or Taehyun.

 

“Work on your problems and stop screwing with Namtae is what I’m trying to say.” Seungyoon nonchalantly spoke as he tried to open the water bottle once again for a second gulp. Mino couldn’t help but stared at the maknae-leader in awe. He felt… neither exposed nor uncomfortable is what it really was, what he was feeling. He wondered why he never asked himself,  _how would other people in the band act if they know what was happening. How far did they know?_  How could they not, Mino thought. He never stopped to think about anything else, but Seunghoon, and whatever else was in his head at that moment –  _mostly Seunghoon, the Seunghoon who never wanted him the way he need_. Does Taehyun know? Does Jinwoo know? Does Seungyoon know? About  _us_? That was never his concern. Does Seunghoon know? About him and Taehyun? He shuddered. God, d _oes Seunghoon know?_

 

“That was a long and awkward silence.” Seungyoon said out loud. Mino was startled at the sound. “Am I talking to myself or what?”

 

“Sorry, Seungyoon, I was just thinking…” Mino mumbled as he tried to control himself. His fingers started shaking uncontrollably; he resisted by clenching his fists and hiding them in his pocket.

 

“Hiding your hand tremor?” Seungyoon continued to ask. He didn’t shy away from the fierce eye contacts, nor did he feel bad about saying things as they are. “You should probably stop your drinking too, big boy. If you’re fucked in the head, best not let your body take the fall for it.”

 

“Did you just say that I’m fucked in the head?” Mino couldn’t believe in the rudeness in Seungyoon’s words. The good-natured, polite, and well-behaved guy was standing there, fiercely looking at him, and it didn’t look like Seungyoon was gonna back down. “That was uncalled for.”

 

“I’m not insulting you or whatever.” Seungyoon shrugged. “But this occupation is already stressful as is. Hey, I am fucked in the head too. Maybe you don’t know, but I made time to go to therapy and whatnot.” He lowered his gaze and sat back down. Mino unconsciously mimicked his action. He sat down on the chair; his whole body, however, still tensed up, even though his hands stop trembling quite a bit.

 

“I would drink too, that sounds like a mesmerizing option. Who doesn’t like being submerged in their pain and forgetting everything else? Forget reality and escape to some other dimensions, I do that a lot.” Seungyoon elbowed his knees and laid his chin on his intertwined fingers. “But I’m a guitarist. I can’t afford to have hand tremor, or else I’m done for. You know what I’m talking about?”

 

“I’m kinda lost here, leader. It would help if you stop beating around the bush.”

 

“Long story short: I know it through Taehyun.”  _Technically._ Seungyoon decided to not tell Mino how he knew everything. “About your drinking abuse, anger issues, and whatever else you got. I suppose promiscuity is not a form of illness, but it can be a little shitty when you lead someone on.”

 

“What do you mean? Did Taehyun tell you something?” Mino looked stunned at the mention of Taehyun’s name.

 

“You don’t actually think Taehyun is your muted sex toy, do you? He is actually a human being, with feelings and everything. He also like, speaks and stuff. With his friends and other social connections of his.”  _Friends and other social connections._ Seungyoon slightly shook his head; his lips curved into a sarcastic smirk.

 

“I never thought of Taehyun that way.” Mino protested. “Whatever we do is mutual and consensual, if that’s what you’re accusing me for.”

 

“My god, church oppa, I don’t know how far long your head is in your ass, but it’s time you pulled it out.” Seungyoon rolled his eyes once again and kicked back on the couch. “Your sense of entitlement is amazing. You think you reserved that right to be oblivious and irresponsible with yourself and other people. Well guess what genius, doing everything for someone you love also includes lying to yourself. It’s pathetic, but people do it.”  _Oh the irony._ Seungyoon wanted to laugh, but he forwent the sentiment.

 

“I told you to be straightforward, for the love of god. Cut down the metaphor, lyricist. You are saying?”

 

“You think our maknae have sex with you just because he’s bored?”

 

“I don’t ask for his reasons. He didn’t ask for mine.” Mino scoffed. “It just happened that way. I didn’t force him. He was okay with our arrangement.”

 

“So you said.”

 

“Seungyoon, what is your point?”

 

“I’ve got one. A really important point.” Seungyoon said as he started packing his stuff preparing to leave. “But again, it’s not my story to tell. If you can’t figure stuff out on your own, I can’t teach you how. I just beg of you, be a little  _fucking_  considerate to people around you, regardless of whether you  _care_ for them or not.”

 

The younger leader threw the guitar bag over his shoulder and left without closing the door. The light outside the hall automatically brightened upon Seungyoon’s steps.  Mino sat alone in the cold studio, long after all the lights have gone out.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“I’m sorry, Taehyun.” Mino suddenly said to a restless Taehyun who wasn’t quite comfortable being in the older guy’s bedroom.  _Sober, both of them were._  Taehyun stared at him, bewildered, as Mino proceeded to touch the younger man’s hand. “I have been an asshole to you, haven’t I?” The stabbing pain on his feet kept reminding him of the words Seungyoon told him a while back. No, he could not sincerely  _care_  for anyone if the one bleeding is him. He did wish someone would come for him and clean this mess – but that one person would never come. He knew it, yet here he was, destroying everything at hand as if it was the only way he could break down the prison inside of him and break the chains that held all the pain in place.

 

“Well, if you put it that way…” Taehyun awkwardly replied; he pulled his hand back and hid it behind his back. Mino looked at the younger guy – _marvelous, pretty, indifferent Taehyun_  – who was clenching his fists into his trousers pockets. He seemed obviously uncomfortable at the conversation, but without the intention to disrupt the moment. Mino inhaled sharply and whispered as he slowly released the oxygen:

 

“Do you like me, Hyunie?”

 

Taehyun looked dazzled at Mino’s words. He almost stepped backwards, yet still tried to maintain his cool:

 

“What is this all about?”

 

Mino observed Taehyun closely – but he couldn’t  _feel_  anything. He wanted to question the genuineness of this conversation. He too, wanted to know if anyone has ever  _felt_ for him. But the only thing he could feel was emptiness blocking all of his vision and sensation. Like a prisoner inside a pit dark hole, he looked around and tried to find a light, all that ever answered him was the sound of the chronicle throbbing pains stomping inside his head.

 

“You waited for me all those nights.” Mino murmured. “You cleaned up after me.” Mino knew what Taehyun had done for him. He knew it well – and if he was a decent human being, he should think about it, anything at all. “You rushed to me right away when you heard noises from my room…” Mino continued speaking; his voice trembled. “Do you like me?”

 

Taehyun’s face turned pale. Mino stole a glance at the younger face. He saw the shame, the horror, and a little bit of  _hope_  on that gorgeous face.

 

“Please don’t like me.” The older guy asked once again, this time with those cold and calm eyes directing towards Taehyun’s. How could Taehyun forget, even once, that he has seen those eyes before. The dead, lifeless, indifferent eyes that informed him well, since the very beginning, that Mino’s kindness  _was not directed toward him. So does his heart. And his soul. And his love._ Doesn’t Taehyun know better than that? Taehyun couldn’t help but feeling exposed, and like a person who was ashamed of just  _existing,_  he almost explained himself.  _It’s okay – I don’t mean to burden you. You were in pain, and I…_ Taehyun caught himself making apologies inside his head, and wanted to laugh out loud.  _Do I need to be sorry for feeling the way I do too, hyung?_ _Ain't I punished enough?_

 

Taehyun quietly shook his head; his lips twitched into a crooked smile. For one second he let himself think of some other endings than the ones that he would have the courage to imagine. Those blunt words found its way into the darkest corner inside, like a tree with these ever-expanding branches that rooted itself in his heart, gripping rigidly to every single heartbeat. He wanted to disappear.

 

“What are you saying, man. We just do stuff is all.”

 

In front of Mino, Taehyun was weakly defending his heart – and that should hurt Mino too, because he always thought that he genuinely liked Taehyun as a person. But human emotion has its way of functioning – the chemical interactions in the brain determine how one react in the face of events. He really didn’t care enough for Taehyun. Then he was struck by the realization, that  _this must have been what Seunghoon felt._

 

“I figured you wouldn’t.” Mino smiled. He carried on the rest of the conversation, well-knowing that he was breaking the boy’s heart. But he couldn’t sympathize, at all, and that thought wounded him. God, how lonely are we, Taehyunnie, when you can see my heart and I can see yours, yet all you do was apologizing for the pain you didn’t cause, and all I do was neglecting the pain I caused you. How lonely are we, Seunghoon hyung, you never understood the hell I’m living in and you didn’t even see it. Such lonesome people we are. Such lonesome people we were.

 

“You could stay if you want to.” Mino said as Taehyun rushed out of the door. Just stay, if that would make you feel a little better. He looked at the cut under his feet; the blood already seeped out of the poorly done bandages.  _Was that why Seunghoon let him stay?_

 

 

Then he thought of Seungyoon’s words.

 

 

_Doing everything for someone you love also includes lying to yourself. It’s pathetic, but people do it._

 

 

 

 

Was that why Mino stayed?

.

.

./.

 

 

 


	13. not enough

It was a day of seemingly some years ago, when they were still trainees. Jinwoo thinks he doesn’t remember it well, but it was there, fresh in his mind, like newly painted watercolor picture. A careless touch and your finger would bleed color. Jinwoo likes to occasionally think back on that day; he goes through the memories like flipping pages on an old book, examines the scattered still-images of the past like an audience in their favorite art exhibition. Till this day, sitting next to Seunghoon or listening to him pulling another stupid joke about the day Mino broke his heart doesn’t bother Jinwoo anymore. Much as it never bothered him back then, being the one who shared Seunghoon’s friendship and his darkest secrets, without ever, _ever_ mentioning how amazing it would be if Jinwoo can have a piece of his heart too.

But a person like Jinwoo always learned the lesson the hard way.

.

.

.

“No, I’m fine. I’m actually fine, don’t worry for me, Seungyoon.” I said as I retreated into the corner, putting the headphones on top of the hood over my head. Kang Seungyoon stared at the face mask and the glasses on my face.

“Hyung, are you sure you’re okay? You’re, like, having a hundred layers on. What’s the matter?”

I closed my eyes and turned his back to him, nodding my head as if I’m listening to some hardcore music. It wasn’t that far from the truth. Underneath the thick gray hoodie, I could hear the sound of my heart beating violently, like drumbeat against the wall, like screams echoing in the mountains.

“You have been acting like this for days. You can’t expect me to leave you alone.” Seungyoon’s worrisome voice reminded me of the times when I locked myself in the bathroom and cried until I passed out upon the news that Lee Seunghoon was eliminated on that audition survival show. Back then, I didn’t even know who he was. I should have known that if a stranger could pain me like that, I should take extra measures to be cautious if he ever becomes a loved one. Kang Seungyoon was the one who witnessed me being at my absolute worse; yet I couldn’t tell him a thing. He didn’t _know_ me like that, despite how caring he was.

“You can talk to me, hyung. Did something happen? Did you fight with Seunghoon-hyung?” Seungyoon asked patiently, even though the strength he forced onto my arm told me otherwise. “It wasn’t like you to act like this.”

“Nothing. Nothing is the matter.” I pulled my arm away.

“I knew you could hear me.” Seungyoon insisted.

“Fuck off, Seungyoon.” I said without looking at the younger guy. He froze for a moment before withdrawing his hand. Moments later, I heard the footsteps drifting away and the door closed behind me.

“Nothing is the matter.” I kept mumbling to myself while writing extensively onto a piece of paper. I stretched harshly on the pencil; soon enough, the lead broke in half. It didn’t matter anyway, because whatever I was writing at the time wouldn’t turn into lyrics, nor would it become a song. I’m not Seungyoon, or Taehyun, or Mino. Especially Mino – especially _him_. I’m the guy with nothing but seven years of training and a pretty face. The one who got nothing but determination and loyalty. The one who needed nothing but someone whose gazes didn’t look like sympathy and pitifulness. I’m the poor little guy, the talentless, the rejected, the bystander Kim Jinwoo. And as of today, I got nothing left.

 

\+ + +

 

One day of February, years ago. It was a few days short of Lunar New Year. They were sitting in their usual coffee shop, getting their caffeine on to make up for the endless training sections. Seunghoon was on his tablet playing mindless game when Jinwoo brought over their orders. Seunghoon ordered a seasonal peppermint mocha – they always had that flavor during this time of the year. From early December, to celebrate Christmas, but the special drinks were served well until late January due to popular demands. Jinwoo got a black coffee and Seunghoon raised his eyebrows while scoffing under his breath – “so pretentious, trying hard to be cool” – to which Jinwoo just smiled and motioned his hand to dismiss. Seunghoon didn’t know Jinwoo wasn’t inclined to sleep much anyway.

 “Song Minho.” Jinwoo exclaimed. “He sounds like a cool guy, helping you with your practice and all.” Seunghoon just smiled without saying much. “I figured.”

“How did he agree to help you?” Jinwoo asked, curiously. “He looked a little bit scary at first to me, honest.”

“Well, Wooya, everyone is intimidating to you but me.” Seunghoon slightly chuckled; the warm sound made Jinwoo a little bit flustered. He quickly explained himself:

“If you were me, you would feel the same way.” He pressed his lips. “Except for me, everyone else in the group seems so comfortable with their skills.” Seunghoon glared at him for a while, then reached over to rub his messy hair. His eyes almost turned into two straight lines as he smiled:

“You forgot about me.”

“You got talents though.” Jinwoo protested. “Your dancing skill is recognized even amongst the higher-ups. They love you.”

“I wouldn’t be so quick to conclude that, Wooya.” Seunghoon shrugged as if he didn’t want to continue the conversation. But then he continued. “BigTone hyung thought I was hopeless in rapping, and I got criticized a lot. Not that he ain’t right.”

“That’s not fair. You just started rapping recently.” _Unlike me. I have trained for almost eight years._ Jinwoo didn’t finish the sentence, but the look from Seunghoon’s eyes said everything. He spoke up, in the most serious manner possible:

“Well Wooya, to be honest, I could train forever and still wouldn’t have your face.”

Jinwoo was taken aback; he wasn’t prepared for this comment. Almost right away, he realized that it was another cynical joke, available 24/7 in Seunghoon’s repertoire. The older started giggling and hitting Seunghoon’s shoulders.

“Ouch. Why do you hit me for??” The slightly younger guy complained as he shielded himself. “Wasn’t the truth spoken in all earnest beauty?”

“I was being serious and you made fun of me!” Jinwoo stopped attacking Seunghoon with his tiny arm and focused on wiping his eyes instead. The tears were coming out, either because of the joke, or that from the inside, Jinwoo knew it wasn’t just a laughing matter. As he predicted, Seunghoon said again:

“I wasn’t making fun of you. I’m stating a fact. Nobody could ever have your face – and believe me, it’s goddamn gorgeous. It’s equivalent of a certain type of talent. And I’m not saying you only got your face. No, you were born with it – but you also work so fucking hard, _god_ , you worked so diligently, and that’s another _fucking_ talent, Wooya.”

Jinwoo drifted his fixed gaze from Seunghoon into an uncertain part of the room. His eyes opened widely, as widely as possible, as he tried to fight back the tears. Seunghoon didn’t look at him either. He got back to switching between apps and songs on his tablet. Maybe he was embarrassed after the pet talk. It was unlike him to have such compassionate and supportive comments. Jinwoo knew Seunghoon – he ain’t the talking type. That was precisely why it was that much more precious. After moments of silence, Seunghoon continued as he held Jinwoo’s hand tightly:

“You are enough. For me.”

Jinwoo _almost_ believed Seunghoon.

Until he shoved the chair back and hurriedly left, leaving Jinwoo all by himself at the coffee shop.

 

+ + +

 

I never brought up what happened in the coffee shop with Seunghoon again. It was almost natural that we never even talked that much again – like everything happened before just dissolved into thin air. I spent most of the nights in the studio looking at my own notes and tried to think of a melody that would fill the hole inside my heart. It didn’t. Not when I could hear quite well on the other side of the wall the faint laughter of the two rappers.

I never found out exactly why and how I came to this point, drinking dark coffee without dinner and staying up all night training for that high note that always made my voice crack. But then I realize that has always been my life. Sometimes, I would turn around to see if I was mistaken about my current state – what if nothing ever happened and Seunghoon was laying somewhere in the same room, quietly listening to music on his ipod, as he always did.

I kept looking for him like that for months.

 

 

When they found me sleeping in the corner of the practice room, it was almost 11pm. Less than twelve hours until the battle against team B _and_ JYP trainees started.

“You need to memorize the lyrics. It’s the only way, hyung.” A worrisome Kang Seungyoon, along with a greatly horrified Nam Taehyun tried to shake some sense into me. “We don’t have much time. What’s wrong with you? It’s not like you at all.” _To fall asleep like a human being and not slaving myself away practicing, you mean._ I looked up at the two young faces, not saying anything. The terror on their faces was news. I never saw anything like that; it wasn’t like the composers-singers duo expressed a lot of sentiment regarding me anyway. But that might be a lie, I don’t know. I was so, _so tired_. I didn’t want to wake up.

“Please, hyung. We can’t fuck this up.” Seungyoon kneeled down to hold my body up. Behind him, Taehyun slowly backed off until he reached the chair against the wall and sat down. He still couldn’t make sense of the scenario. Perhaps, he didn’t know what to make of it. In the end, Kim Jinwoo, the trainee that spent more than seven years of his life training (without getting any better), acting up in a way that could sabotage his own debut, was the last thing that he had to worry about.

“It’s not my fault you guys choose to make a mash-up for the competition.” I said under my breath. _It wasn’t my fault that Seunghoon and Mino pulled themselves off the team to join team B’s rappers for the performance either._ I knew I was being an asshole, and none of the boys deserved my attitude right now – it wasn’t just my, but also their debut depending on my hand. It wasn’t like I could step back and train a few more years either. But I was there, in the studio, looking at them discussing between each other about how to make the most complicated combinations of notes, melody, and harmonies, without remotely paying attention to what I would, or could, do. In the corner of the room, Taehyun sniffed; he didn’t say anything but I could hear it clearly from the way he leaned down, both elbows on his knees, his legs anxiously tapping on the floor. _If it were just Seungyoon and I, we would have made it so easily._ I closed my eyes once more as Seungyoon begged:

“We can make it, hyung. If you would just memorize the lyrics and practice.”

“All night long, yes, that would do.” I finally opened my eyes. Slightly pushing Seungyoon out of the way, I got up and grabbed my stuff before heading toward the recording room, leaving the younger guys behind who exchanged gazes of doubt and disbelief.

 

Of course _that_ wouldn’t do.

 

Once again, I fucked up an one-in-a-million opportunity given to me; this time, in front of everyone. I was overwhelmed by the strange place and the strangers’ faces. The songs were strange, the beats were strange, and here I was, being on something less than a stage of which the consequences were much greater. I avoided looking at the people surrounding us, whose expressions almost looked like unsounded jeers and taunts.  It didn’t help that the cameras were everywhere, or that the whole world would witness my absolute failure when the program was broadcasted. The voice that came out of my mouth sounds as foreign and _deformed_ as it could be – no matter how clearly I remembered it in my head.

_But now, after meeting you, the belief I had kept in my heart has fallen apart._

I couldn’t finish the sentence and left the beat empty on its own. After a few moments, Seungyoon picked up singing and finished the chorus with Taehyun’s help. I tried to focus but continuously made mistakes until the very end. The band mates, along with other trainees put their heads down really low.

It didn’t help either, when Seunghoon looked away, from wherever he was, with Mino next to him, who was probably clenching his fists and closing his eyes to avoid this embarrassment. I held back my tears as I listened to Park Jinyoung and Yang Hyunsuk’s comments. The tension in the room rose by the minutes. _Ah, I can taste the disappointment on the tip of my tongue._

 

 

“Ya’ll heard YG’s comments.” Seungyoon exhaled as he threw the cap to the floor. “Our teamwork today sucks.”

“It does.” Taehyun aggressively threw himself onto the couch. “It fucking sucks.”

By teamwork, they really meant me. I kept my thoughts to myself as I walked to the corner of the room, the place where I always belonged.

“Our group is in trouble.” Seungyoon said again and scratched his hair. I knew he tried to provoke a response or a reaction from me without being an asshole about it. After all, I did understand their consideration – they wanted to be nice about my failure, but they also didn’t have time to be too polite. The debut was what’s at stake.

“Do you think...” I finally said as I sat down onto the floor. “We got a group?”

Both Seungyoon and Taehyun stood up instantly as soon as they heard me. I guess they remembered their own words. Perhaps because they realized that they could hear me very clearly without seeing me from where they were sitting. They couldn’t see me now, and then, on that day a few months ago, when they had that conversation. Parts of me thought that maybe the reasons for them not seeing me wasn’t because I sat in a hidden corner. They just never really paid special attention to me.

Seungyoon hesitantly walked up and found me sitting neatly in the corner, hidden by all the furniture and messy random boxes. Both of them just stood there as the bitter realization unfolded in their expression. They finally remembered that this was my spot, and that they never really thought of it whenever they discussed sensitive matters. Not very flattered, I thought to myself, to be virtually and physically invisible to those who are your colleagues. Taehyun looked at me all apologetic; he reluctantly tried to say something, but seemed unable to. I shook my head silently. Not that any of them was wrong. It was just that my effort didn’t get me more than, what, a “warm and kind” personality.

“I didn’t know you were there.” Taehyun finally said. “I’m sorry if you were offended.” He wanted to say something else but stopped himself instead. How would you explain yourself when nothing would change the fact that you _meant_ everything you said, regardless of how hurtful it would be to others?

“It was a long time ago, hyung. We didn’t really know anything better then.” Seungyoon continued where Taehyun left off. I shrugged:

“Kids, you know it’s bullshit. Especially you, Seungyoon. You have trained with me the longest.” Seungyoon became so uncomfortable as I spoke. I sighed. “But I fucked this shit up. It’s on me. So leave, I need some alone time.”

 

 

Seungyoon was the first to leave. I guess he couldn’t afford the guilt. I felt bad for imposing my uneasiness on him; I somehow always ended up doing that. When I looked up, Taehyun was still there in the room. He sat down next to me; his facial expression became serious.

“Jinwoo hyung, I need to talk to you.”

Despite my feigned ignorance, Taehyun went on:

“I’m sorry I underestimated you. It was our fault today that you messed up.”

I stole a glance at Taehyun, trying to read into his face, expecting to find at least some pretention and mocking. But Taehyun was genuine as he tried to find appropriate words:

“We should have thought harder to incorporate you into the performance and not just make you memorize everything like a goddamn homework. That was our failure, not yours.”

It should have made me feel better; except it didn’t. But then Taehyun looked at me, straight in the eyes.

“But how can we make you our teammate if you are too busy with your own clique? I know nothing about you, hyung.”

“I guess I could say the same.” I smiled at the younger guy and he stayed silent. Then he reached out to me and said something into my ears. I held my breath and slowly turned to look at him. His focus eyes sparkled in the night.

 

\+ + +

 

 “I wondered if Mino also felt the same way I do about you.” Jinwoo unconsciously mumbled after spending minutes studying the slightly younger guy’s face. He didn’t know why he said that. Maybe he was high on compliments, or that for the first time in _years_ there was someone as talented yet _familiar_ as Seunghoon walking into his life and didn’t find him a burden. “You are enough. For me.” Seunghoon had said. I _am_ enough. The younger’s words touched his ears like golden bell rings; he could feel the warmth spreading from his hand, still being held by Seunghoon, throughout his whole body. “Otherwise he wouldn’t stick to you and offered to help like that, would he?”

Jinwoo learned really quickly how bad of a mistake it was. The sudden jerk in Seunghoon’s hand alerted him. “What do you mean?”

“I thought you knew…” Jinwoo opened his mouth, but he couldn’t even finish the sentence. Next to him, Seunghoon pulled back his hand quickly, as he became flustered. Not in the way Jinwoo wanted. He wasn’t an idiot – he could take a hint. Except, whatever Seunghoon was pulling in front of him is much sadder than that. He looked down into his half-empty cup of black coffee when Seunghoon hurried through the door after barely waving at him instead of saying goodbye.

.

.

.

There Taehyun was, leaning toward me. The whisper burst out from his lips like a deep breath in a cold winter night, freezing at the merest interaction with the air. I couldn’t help but shudder.

 

 

_Why did Seunghoon-hyung leave you?_

 

_./._


End file.
